Peter Snell farms 1,100ha of arable crops at North Farm, Horton, Wimborne in Dorset. He struggled with bad voice calls, dropouts and generally poor quality unless it was just calls between the combine driver and corn cart operator.
He approached two telecoms companies but chose Gloucestershire-based Fieldtalk. The result is a remarkable improvement in quality, he says, with calls still stable as far away as Salisbury (6-7 miles).
He makes very good use of the radios, he says. “We have a base station on the grainstore, a unit in the farm office, one in the combine, one in the self-propelled sprayer, two in Fendt tractors, one in both the Deere and JCB, one on another vehicle plus two handheld versions that everyone on the farm can use. Also you can use one of two channels and our own channel.”
“It’s also helpful for lone workers – the radio can act as an SOS system.
“Even if the base station goes down or we are out of range of the system, we can still use the two in radio-to-radio mode,” he says. “It’s almost instant. We wouldn’t be without it.”