Why The F2 Locator Still Deserves A Place In Your HDD Fleet

If you spend any time around HDD crews, you quickly hear the same story. The rig is fine, the mud is fine, the plan is fine, but the “signal” keeps causing problems. Depth jumps, pitch does not quite match what the rods feel like, and suddenly a simple bore turns into a slow, stressful day.

Most of the time, that is not a rig problem. It is a guidance problem. And for a huge number of contractors, the backbone of that guidance is still the F2 platform. Instead of chasing the newest gadget on every rig, a lot of companies quietly make steady money with a well organised F2 setup that just works.

This guest post is about why the F2 locator still makes sense, how to build a sensible workflow around it, and what to think about when you are deciding whether to buy, replace or add another unit to your fleet.

F2 is built for the work you actually do most

Look at your last few months of jobs. Chances are most of your revenue did not come from epic river crossings or ultra deep shots. It came from:

• Short and medium length service lines
• Fiber and telecom runs through neighborhoods
• Water and gas lines under local roads
• Utility relocations in light commercial areas

These bores need solid, predictable guidance, but they do not always need the highest end, most complex locator on the market. That is exactly the space where F2 shines.

With an F2 based setup you get:

• A simple interface that new locator hands can learn without a two week course
• Enough depth and data range for the majority of service and distribution work
• A huge installed base, which means housings, transmitters and spare parts are easy to find
• Proven behavior in typical soils and interference conditions

In other words, F2 is not a “budget” choice, it is a practical one. It does the everyday jobs very well, and those are the jobs that keep your crew working and your invoices pa

Why standardising around F2 reduces chaos

Walk into almost any HDD yard and you will find a familiar sight, a shelf or toolbox full of mixed guidance gear. Different locator models, different beacons, different battery types, all with half remembered histories. On paper that looks like flexibility. In real life it often means confusion, delays and finger pointing.

Standardising around one main platform for everyday work, like F2, changes that equation. When your “bread and butter” rigs all use the same locator, a lot of friction disappears:

• Training is faster, because new crews only need to master one interface for most jobs
• Spares are simpler, because you can stock one family of sondes and housings in depth
• Troubleshooting is easier, because everyone understands what “normal” looks like for that system

Instead of every rig being its own special case, you have a standard kit that operators recognise the moment they pick it up.

If you are at the stage of equipping a new crew or replacing an older unit, you might be looking for a straightforward option, and you can always check a focused selection of digitrak f2 locator here and build the rest of your guidance package around that.

How many locators does your operation really need

Another mistake contractors make is thinking in terms of “one locator for the company”. That is a recipe for bottlenecks and rushed handovers between jobs.

A better way is to think about locators the same way you think about rigs:

• Every active rig that regularly leaves the yard should have its own dedicated locator
• At least one spare F2 unit should exist at the yard, tested and ready, to cover breakdowns or overlapping schedules
• If you run shifts or weekend work, factor that into the number of locators you actually need in circulation

This might sound expensive until you calculate the cost of a crew and rig waiting because “the locator is still on another job”. One missed day can easily cost more than the monthly payment on another F2 unit.

F2 plus “one high end rig” is a powerful combination

Standardising on F2 for everyday work does not mean ignoring advanced systems. In fact, one of the most efficient setups looks like this:

• Two or more rigs equipped with F2 for residential and light commercial bores
• One premium rig equipped with a more advanced wideband locator for deep, interference heavy or high consequence projects

The F2 rigs keep your core revenue steady. The high end locator is reserved for the jobs where signal failure would be truly painful. That way you are not paying top tier money to do simple work, and you are not forcing mid range guidance into situations where it is out of its comfort zone.

Small habits that make your F2 feel “boringly reliable”

Even the best locator can be undermined by bad habits in the field. If you want your F2 units to feel like boring, reliable tools instead of fragile gadgets, a few simple practices go a long way:

• Always test locator and sonde together in the yard before heading to site
• Keep battery contacts and compartments clean, dry and corrosion free
• Store locators in proper cases, not loose in the back of a truck
• Train crews to recognise and report weird signal behaviour early, instead of just “living with it”
• Keep a basic log of which locator and transmitter were used on which job, so you can spot patterns

These small steps do not take much time, but they often decide whether your locator quietly works for years or becomes an unreliable source of stress.

When it is time to add or upgrade an F2

So when does it make sense to buy or add another F2 unit

Some clear triggers:

• You regularly have rigs waiting on a locator to come back from another job
• You are turning down smaller projects because guidance gear is tied up on a bigger site
• Your only F2 unit is old enough that you no longer fully trust it on busy weeks
• You are building a second crew for service work and want them on familiar equipment

In each of these cases, another F2 is not just a gadget, it is a way to unlock more billable days and reduce friction in your schedule.

Final thoughts

The F2 locator may not be the newest name in HDD guidance, but it is still one of the most practical tools you can put in the hands of a crew that does real work, every single week.

By treating it as the standard for everyday jobs, giving each rig its own dedicated unit, backing it up with enough compatible sondes and enforcing a few simple care routines, you turn “the signal” from a constant question mark into a quiet strength.

In the long run, that boring reliability is exactly what lets your business grow, because the guidance part of the job simply does what it should while you focus on winning and delivering more projects.