Sorry SLOweather for the lack of info, most of it is because I was just literally dropped on this project and I've had one day of maybe 4 hours to look over some simple tests so far. I'll try to answer some of the questions as best as I can. The stations that are in use are the Spectrum Watchdog 2000 series with a mix of Full and Mini stations in the network.
Antennas? etc. -- Didn't really have a good look at them other then whomever set up the stations has them attached to the inside of the box that holds the modem, battery, COM board, and regulator for the battery and solar hook-up. From what I've looked over on the Spectrum website and documentation that seems to be a normal practice with this model/version.
It's at least 5 years old as the documentation that seems to be on the Spectrum website now does not include a a modem like the one's that are in this system. I'm not one hundred percent sure but I believe it's GPRS but obviously not the one they are selling to folks now, and not the ones that I've seen that are were sent to replace old ones in the current units. The new ones are bi-directional but that would have me assume that the old ones are not if they're also promoting that.
Here are the lat/lon for the area covered, mainly farm land except for clusters of homes or buildings in the small towns or farm centers that sprinkle the area. Lats run from 45°19'48.48"N down to 45°6'32.34"N and Lon runs from 73°41'50.00"W to 73°21'06.04"W roughly. I don't have any photos of the sites but I do have their locations roughly approximated with their lat and lons.
Sorry that I wasn't able to answer more of the questions, I should be working on it more this week hopefully so I'll try to grab photos and other information when I can.
As for now, it looks like they want to as I mentioned before use RF but this has only been tested by one of the Agro-scientists north of where we are using a Raspberry Pi Model B, two Xbee Pro 900 RPSMA modules linked by two 900MHz 2dBi Duck antennas. That however, is not connecting more then one station and at the Raspberry Pi's end it goes straight through that farms network to the server. That might end up being the best option for some of these locations but others are farther away from the growers produce buildings.
I hope this helps a bit more. And thanks for the help so far!