PA6

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
makes a mochary of the whole thing when you can pass your PA2 on a quad bike with a 1m wide boom and 150L tank and that covers you to drive the biggest SP on the market but not a 50L knapsack :rolleyes:

To make you feel better, i did my certs when I was at college, when they first came out in 1988. We pee’d about on quad bikes with trailed sprayers with (iirc) 3m booms. We even got to do some of it in Harper’s new indoor field.

I was then qualified to use a 36m SP, a knapsack and a slug pelleter (which we didn’t even see on the course).? I would contend that the basic principles are the same for each, although obviously the finer details vary.

Of course, that was before the training industry really got their teeth into the money making racket and more farms were mixed, rather than struggling to find something to fill their time.....
 

Pan mixer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Near Colchester
The assessment can be up to 2 hours.
Mine took longer than that, chiefly due to a dispute between me and the examiner regarding application rates which after a great deal of calculator work he conceded that I was right.

The walking regularly was the trick - singing Onward Christian soldiers was my secret as marching then is easy.

Before I went on this course I regarded knapsacking as an amateur activity mainly consisting of wafting the wand about in a random sort of way and, sometime in the future, wondering why some of the weeds weren't dead.

Now I still do a bit of wafting I must admit but now know exactly why all the weeds aren't dead.
 

Gav

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Norfolk
Mine took longer than that, chiefly due to a dispute between me and the examiner regarding application rates which after a great deal of calculator work he conceded that I was right.

The walking regularly was the trick - singing Onward Christian soldiers was my secret as marching then is easy.

Before I went on this course I regarded knapsacking as an amateur activity mainly consisting of wafting the wand about in a random sort of way and, sometime in the future, wondering why some of the weeds weren't dead.

Now I still do a bit of wafting I must admit but now know exactly why all the weeds aren't dead.

I have a suspicion of which assessor that would be given your area, might be wrong though.

Using a song to maintain walking speed is something I tell all trainees to try on the Pa6 courses that I do as is a length of fishing line with a weight on to maintain consistent height. Most people don’t believe us when we say that Pa6a/aw/g are the hardest to get through.

Assessment guidelines are now 1.5-3hrs for the test.
 

Cowslip

Member
Mixed Farmer
I have pa6AW, did mine at Harlow college in 1999. I use it for spraying around the edges of buildngs and odd thistles in a few paddocks where the boom sprayer won't fit. Handy for around fishing lake to have the AW part off it.
 

Bogweevil

Member
Took my pa6 in 1990, course in North Cadbury village hall. Quite an experience.

Had refresh this summer, no exam, just the course, since some youngsters in our training group had arranged the course. Well worth it, learnt a lot.
 

Cowlife

Member
Used to train pa6a and aw.
Some people knew it inside out and prob only needed brushing up on legislation. Some people were very weak with some of the worst being from the councils who would admit to things like using a full 5l jar of roundup per knapsack as they had no idea about the label or putting it on straight because they couldn't find water on site.
 

Kidds

Member
Horticulture
Used to train pa6a and aw.
Some people knew it inside out and prob only needed brushing up on legislation. Some people were very weak with some of the worst being from the councils who would admit to things like using a full 5l jar of roundup per knapsack as they had no idea about the label or putting it on straight because they couldn't find water on site.
Jeepers!
Last “council” gang I saw was leaning out of the passenger window of a moving Transit van wafting a lance around with very fine mist. Supposedly doing the verge, no doubt glyphosate.
I’d say it was illegal never mind extremely bad practice.
I have never seen anyone spraying the verge and thought they were doing a reasonable job.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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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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