Dear OmniSTAR partners,

This year has passed like a thunderstorm: it proved an extremely busy year with many new challenges and opportunities. And the year isn’t even over yet. This newsletter will offer you a glance at all recent developments that have taken place within and around our organization.

Just to mention a few here already (more later-on in this Newsletter):

• The Agritechnica (a major bi-annual agricultural event in Hanover Germany) is near and at that time we will present the latest information with regards to our products and services. Besides that it will be a great opportunity to meet again with all of you.
• To support new markets and to expand our business into the Indian and Middle Eastern Regions we’ve appointed two new employees for both our Indian and Middle-Eastern branch offices.
• A broadcasting change: the AFSAT satellite switch to EUSAT was announced and will be completed by the end of November

We are looking forward to meet you during the Agritechnica or one of the other upcoming events,

Cor de Kuijper
Commercial Manager Europe & CIS

Mr. S.K. Jena has been appointed as our Commercial Manager for the Indian region. Mr. Jena has over 25 years experience in various managerial roles in both public and the private organizations. His technical fields of expertise are GPS, GIS and Remote Sensing. Mr Jena will further strengthen our sales and marketing organization for India and Sri Lanka and will be the first point of contact for all our customers in those regions.
Mr. Jena is based in our branch office in Mumbai together with Mr. Vishal Kulkarni. Mr Kulkarni reports to Mr Jena.

Mr. Ashley Taylor has been appointed as our Commercial Manager for the MENA region. Mr. Taylor is a MSc graduate from Imperial College London and has over 7 years of experience of which 5 years has been spent within Fugro as a Geoscientist (Fugro-Jason) and a Business Development Manager. Prior to his appointment within OmniSTAR Mr. Taylor has been involved with technical and commercial roles in the Far East, Europe and the Middle East.
Mr Taylor is based in our Abu Dhabi branch Office and will be technically supported by our local Fugro Office. Later-on in this newsletter Mr. Taylor will introduce himself further.

A broadcast re-arrangement by our Satellite Provider on Sept 9 this year, has resulted in a move of our broadcast service for the European and African regions to a new satellite and new frequency. This new satellite is named EUSAT and can be found at 1537.44 MHz (1200 BPS). This satellite is located at 25° East (above Kenya).The AFSAT service has for now been moved to the AOREH (Atlantic Ocean Region East High Power) at 15.5 degrees West. That AFSAT service will be ending at the end of November 2009.

Customers using a receiver in Automatic Scanning mode are kindly requested to switch their receiver on during a minimum of two consecutive hours before the end of November. This is a necessary step for the receiver to download information from the OmniSTAR satellite which enables the automatic switchover to the new frequency.

We do apologize for the inconvenience this satellite switch-over may cause and as always during office hours we will be available for helpdesk and technical support at +31 70 31 70 913.

Alternatively outside office hours and for self-help one can also consult the additional information at our website.

We were pleased to meet with many of our suppliers and customers at this year’s Intergeo event in Karlsruhe, GE. At this year’s Intergeo we announced 2 new services: first OmniSTAR IP which offers OmniSTAR corrections via Internet. You can now receive the OmniSTAR corrections also via mobile phone (GPRS) and internet. Also the introduction of Glonass corrections was announced.
Both Glonass and OmniSTAR IP increase the robustness of our solutions. We received many positive reactions and we expect that these new developments will result in even more satisfied customers.

We would like to thank all visitors of our stand for their time and interest. We hope to welcome everybody again at next year’s Intergeo which is scheduled for October 5-7 2010 in Köln, Germany.

A visualization of OmniSTAR’s reference stations and Satellite broadcasts is now available on our website for viewing with Google Earth. Click HERE for the visualization.

It offers information on:

• All Omnistar Satellite beams:
  • Per beam the available reference stations
  • VBS and HP accuracy contour lines estimated from reference station data
  • XP accuracy
  • Azimuth and Elevation footprint
• The location of our NCC’s
• The location of our Satellite Uplinks
• The GPS/Glonass reference network, which is used for GPS and Glonass Orbit calculations

The Agritechnica is our next most significant agricultural event where it will again be possible to meet with our OmniSTAR representatives in person. The Agritechnica is the most important Agricultural machinery show for Europe and beyond. A must attend event for anyone who is interested in the latest developments in agricultural machinery. More and more farmers see the benefits of using GNSS technology as a tool towards saving costs and improving productivity. Automated steering systems have become increasingly more important for the farming industry. OmniSTAR has partnerships with all major players in the farming industry that offer GNSS differential corrections.

If you wish to learn more about OmniSTAR and farming then visit us at the Agritechnica 2009 in Hannover. We will be available during the full duration of the event from November 8th until 14th. Our booth number will be 16F06.

Omnistar has already several years of experience with broadcasting our corrections over the internet using the NTRIP protocol. This broadcast is an exact copy of the corrections also sent by Satellite. One of the receivers that are capable of receiving OmniSTAR corrections via Cellular phone is the Trimble SPS series that also uses Bluetooth between phone and receiver.

Receiving OmniSTAR DGNSS via IP, instead of via regular satellite transmission channels, can be beneficial in situations where the reception of a satellite transmission may be blocked by high buildings, mountains or tree lines. For Novatel OEMV3 based receivers Omnistar has developed a separate application on the basis of the TC65 GPRS modem.

Our solution gets the age of the Omnistar DGPS correction in the GGA sentence. When the latency gets higher than 30 seconds a connection is made through the Cellphone to extract corrections from the Omnistar caster. The application can also work in GPRS only mode for areas in the world were unlimited GPRS is available for a fixed fee. The TC65 can be bought through Omnistar pre-activated or can be sourced locally.

Orbits and Clock corrections for both GPS and Glonass are broadcasted over all our Satellite beams. Now also 9200G2 Firmware 4.09 supports Omnistar Glonass corrections. The same applies for Novatel firmware 3.70.When interested please contact Omnistar and request a test activation.

Advantages of Glonass are

• Increased availability in challenging positions (e.g. close to tree lines and other obstructions)
• Improved convergence time

A technical paper has been presented at the ION. Please click HERE to view the article.

• Trimble announced new GNSS INS OEM modules that are also Omnistar capable. Please click HERE for more details.

• Tornado: New Omnistar Capable antenna for the Pro-XRT system Trimble has launched a new antenna with improved Omnistar L-band tracking performance. The antenna has a higher gain and will report higher CnO and SNR. See HERE.

• At the Intergeo Hemisphere announced the introduction of their A220 and A221 (with Display) Smart Antenna receivers.

• Also Geneq Inc. announced an Omnistar compatible SLXBlue IIL device with Bluetooth and batteries for GIS applications. Details, please click HERE.

As of November 1st 2009 OmniSTAR BV can no longer support and repair Landstar Mark III and IV receivers. These receivers have become obsolete. All current users will be contacted or can contact their sales managers for alternative solutions.

How long have you been working with OmniSTAR BV?

I started with OmniSTAR in June 2009. Before that I had already worked more than 5 years with another Fugro Co (Fugro-Jason). For that OpCo I have been based in London, Aberdeen, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai and Abu Dhabi.

What do you like the most about your current position?

In my current position I have the opportunity to work with a huge variety of customers from many backgrounds and walks of life. Working for OmniSTAR means that everyday is different. There are so many different applications on such an international scale that in the morning I can be talking to a dredger and in the afternoon an airborne surveyor. Each customer and application has its own technical and commercial requirements, meaning that it’s always a challenge to achieve what’s best for both that particular customer.

Anything else you would like to share with our readers? About other activities you enjoy?

I’m very active and play most sports, especially field hockey and cricket. I play the guitar and enjoy listening to my diverse music collection during weekends and my drive to work.

Disclaimer:
We hereby expressly declare that we have no influence whatsoever on the design and content of any web pages reached via links from this Newsletter. OmniSTAR BV hereby expressly disassociates itself from the content of any such linked websites and does not adopt their content.

OmniSTAR BV
The Netherlands * Phone: +31 70 317 0900 * Fax: +31 70 317 0919