Realistic savings to be gained from auto steer

Badshot

Member
Location
Kent
Serious question here. how does auto steer cope with working across a hillside where normally you would have to drive topside of a bout marker line to allow for the crabbing and down hill creeping of the drill outfit, for example?
Never had an issue with it, I guess the tilt compensation takes it into account.
 

John 1594

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
Assume you dial in an "offset"

but it doesnt knows when the soil varies ie the drill will slip more on light land than it will on heavy, or slip more at low speed than it does at high speed

its the same when drilling round corners, to get it to match up you sometimes have to drive right on the edge of your work when going round the corner, but the drill will run narrow and it will all match up fine
 

Badshot

Member
Location
Kent
Assume you dial in an "offset"

but it doesnt knows when the soil varies ie the drill will slip more on light land than it will on heavy, or slip more at low speed than it does at high speed

its the same when drilling round corners, to get it to match up you sometimes have to drive right on the edge of your work when going round the corner, but the drill will run narrow and it will all match up fine
No, offset will stay the same side when you turn round so you'd end up with a fecking great gap, worse than ever.
 

John 1594

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
No, offset will stay the same side when you turn round so you'd end up with a fecking great gap, worse than ever.


talking of that...does it also know that the deeper you run the system discs on a vaddy the more offset it needs....

Because im sure nobody sets the discs at one depth and drills the whole season like it
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Serious question here. how does auto steer cope with working across a hillside where normally you would have to drive topside of a bout marker line to allow for the crabbing and down hill creeping of the drill outfit, for example?

Since on a constant slope the crabbing will be the same, bout after bout, there's no need to compensate. The small misses or overlaps happen when the slope changes. It's not worth worrying about - the alternative is a lot of overlap second guessing how far off the marker line you need to be. I'm surprised a fenlander commented! :p
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Regarding hill side drift, if it was a trailed implement, drill or whatever, would it be better to put the receiver on the implement itself rather than the tractor. I don't know if this is done or not as I've no experience.

I can see that if drift is the same at all times, then it wouldn't be a problem. Certainly manual correction isn't easy.

I don't know how these systems would cope with somebody I used to drill beet for. We started on the curved side of the field and he always asked me to gradually straighten it out so that it ended up parallel with the straight side. No gearings allowed!
 

Badshot

Member
Location
Kent
Regarding hill side drift, if it was a trailed implement, drill or whatever, would it be better to put the receiver on the implement itself rather than the tractor. I don't know if this is done or not as I've no experience.

I can see that if drift is the same at all times, then it wouldn't be a problem. Certainly manual correction isn't easy.

I don't know how these systems would cope with somebody I used to drill beet for. We started on the curved side of the field and he always asked me to gradually straighten it out so that it ended up parallel with the straight side. No gearings allowed!
You can fit antennaes to the implement as well, but rarely done due to cost
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Regarding hill side drift, if it was a trailed implement, drill or whatever, would it be better to put the receiver on the implement itself rather than the tractor. I don't know if this is done or not as I've no experience.

I can see that if drift is the same at all times, then it wouldn't be a problem. Certainly manual correction isn't easy.

I don't know how these systems would cope with somebody I used to drill beet for. We started on the curved side of the field and he always asked me to gradually straighten it out so that it ended up parallel with the straight side. No gearings allowed!

Your customer had his gearings spread out across the whole field. That couldn't happen with auto steer.

Putting the receiver on the implement wouldn't work. The control point would be too far in front so it would be meandering across hunting for the straight line. You can get an additional one for the implement but you need both & I have yet to see one in action due to cost. I have lots of steep fields with very few misses due to slope. The receiver is on the tractor and the drill is a trailed 6m Rapid on auto steer. Overlap is set at 1cm with a 5cm offset for the front discs pulling off line. Correction signal is John Deere SF2 via a SF3000 receiver with gyroscopic sensors for slope compensation.

@John 1594 - if you fancy a trip to the downs of Dorset we'll have a little competition as to who can drive the straightest with the least amount of miss or overlap. I have little doubt that your years of experience will do a great job without technology's help & you'd beat me if I didn't have some help from that little yellow dome on the roof but with it I'm sure I can whoop you! :cool:
 

BLG

Member
It only allows for the tilt of the cab. You have to put another receiver on the implement which shifts the tractor, Trimble calls it Trueguide, or Truetracker which shifts the implement via steering wheels or side shift on the 3 pt linkage. Other makes probably have their own version. It costs!
 

Lapwing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Wiltshire
New Holland. It's an option in the nav toolbox, and seems to help with compensating for crabbing especially with things like vaddy drills pulling from the link arms. The only issue is remembering that the tractor thinks it is behind you and will be picking a swath accordingly on the headland.
 

clbarclay

Member
Location
Worcestershire
Across slope drill drift it isn't a problem because the tractor is following a computer lines rather than following the marks made by the last pass. Where the gradient gradually changes, the change in drift isn't noticeable either. The only time I have been aware is drilling diagonally rather than with or across the slope and the ammount of drill drift can vary with direction.

I have taken to drilling in lands, no reference marks like ploughing to follow here. One of the advantages is that it elliminates the slight drill offest and unequal drift errors on most runs. Like a vaddy, the offset of my unidrill varties a little with depth and conditions.
 

BLG

Member
New Holland. It's an option in the nav toolbox, and seems to help with compensating for crabbing especially with things like vaddy drills pulling from the link arms. The only issue is remembering that the tractor thinks it is behind you and will be picking a swath accordingly on the headland.

New Holland is Trimble which I have. Is it on the 750 equivalent which I haven't? Not that I need it as we are either flat or so steep that we need duals to go across the slope and the autosteer can't cope
 
The 1st time I drilled with GPS across a slope I was worried that there would be gaps in the drilling. Its amazing how far off line the tractor is sometimes, certainly not where you would drive yourself. The same for round bends. I think the biggest issue is actual machine width vs manufacturers advertised width. Also implement draft, its worth spending time with a tape measure to get things right.
 
To answer the original question regarding savings, unless the previous work was very overlapped etc there are no apparent savings if you take in to account the cost of rtk gps ( anything other than rtk is pointless, certainly here anyway) the best bit about auto steer is cosmetic as in straight lines and you do feel a lot fresher when you finish at night
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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