If he can determine the Longitude and Latitude of a single point, and a bearing to another point from that point, or if he can locate a point with a known Lat&Long. he can then transform the entire point set to any coordinate system with ease. That's how it relates to the thread, just because he is not currently tied to any coordinate system doesn't mean he is SOL.
Trimble has the surveying profession as a whole fooled into thinking you need to spend big money on thier products to achieve any degree of accuracy, the NOAA program is free, and was developed in large part by BAE systems for military applications, so I am sure the accuracy rivals Trimble's big cost products.