Auto Steer justification

[Boysground]

I started the auto steer route with a basic Trimble system then everything evolved to a steer ready tractor with egnos, then second hand rtk kit to the system I have now with section control on the sprayer and fertiliser spreader. Each time I have questioned myself is it really worth it? Probably for my acreage in paper it isn’t but in practice I will never go back.
Almost every job is easier and done better for it. Drilling in the dark when I wouldn’t have been able to see before, I have a couple of fields I can’t always get the drill up so I can plant in lands, every field drills to the same area each time.Fertiliser on grass is 100 times more accurate and easy, My new to me section control sprayer is just a joy to use.

Just go for it @Lowland1 you won’t regret it.

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[Lowland1]

Do you actually need RTK? RTX is a lot cheaper and depending on what your doing with it can be plenty accurate enough. We drill, spray and cultivate on Rangepoint and find it ok. Just a thought.

On the trial we tried range point but on a triple bedmaker it was running wide by about 10 cm when we went rtk it was much closer. We will only use it to make beds but i want to go to a permanent wheeling system for most of the crops so the aim is to get them as accurate as possible.@spud mentioned section control on the sprayer which we have and i would not be without it but it came with the sprayer finding £ 10 k to put it onto a tractor makes me cough a bit.

 

[Robt]

Are you scared of her! Who runs the house business! just buy it but get them to change the description on the invoice

 

[Sharpy]

Are you scared of her! Who runs the house business! just buy it but get them to change the description on the invoice

This is the woman who chases down people wearing company clothing who are not employees and straps it of them in the street! Do you think she will be that forgiving when she finds out?

 

[Tomr10]

My wife is a Vet and as such any insult or argument could leave me waking up in the morning missing essential body parts.

Sounds like your missing your tessticals already

 

[Lowland1]

Are you scared of her! Who runs the house business! just buy it but get them to change the description on the invoice

Sounds like your missing your tessticals already

This is the woman who chases down people wearing company clothing who are not employees and straps it of them in the street! Do you think she will be that forgiving when she finds out?

As 5 ft 4 Indian women go she’s pretty scary. She has access to all kinds of sharp instruments and i have seen her castrate race horses under local anathestic while they are still standing so she has the skills. She has been undergoing Chemotherapy for several months and her one concession to this has been to not come back to work on the day she recieves treatment. So we work by concensus here as long as that’s all right by her.

 

[Lofty1984]

Hope she’s coping well with the treatment

 

[Longneck]

On the trial we tried range point but on a triple bedmaker it was running wide by about 10 cm when we went rtk it was much closer. We will only use it to make beds but i want to go to a permanent wheeling system for most of the crops so the aim is to get them as accurate as possible.@spud mentioned section control on the sprayer which we have and i would not be without it but it came with the sprayer finding £ 10 k to put it onto a tractor makes me cough a bit.

Fair enough. If it’s for Spud work you probably need the RTK accuracy and repeatability. JFDI!!!

 

[sodbuster]

We are having a demo of a Trimble/RTK guidance system of our main tractor. My Son and I are very impressed however my Wife says it’s very expensive and our tractor driver can drive straight anyway. How do I justify it to her.

Driving straight and driving accurately are 2 different things. We went to auto steer and managed to save half ton on seed on 180 acres drilling spring barley. There was probably a tramline less in every field due to bo overlaps so less spray and fertiliser used also. That's just the start. There are so many more advantages

 

[Fish]

It's all the small incremental increases in efficiency that add up.

I did a small spray job for a neighbor, spraying off a wheat field with glypho, it was drilled with a 3m combi set with a wee bit of over lap and tram lines at 12m, I'm on 24 so used every other. Those wee over laps added up to 2m every 24m.
jfdi

 

[Spud]

Driving straight and driving accurately are 2 different things. We went to auto steer and managed to save half ton on seed on 180 acres drilling spring barley. There was probably a tramline less in every field due to bo overlaps so less spray and fertiliser used also. That's just the start. There are so many more advantages

A quid an acre saving, maybe a sniff more.
What did it cost you? 9 grand?

I looked at vari rate seed & fert a few years ago, as the 'next step'.
For what it was going to cost, and the hassle creating maps, dealing with invariably unreliable tech, I decided the money was better spent improving fertility by other means.

Autosteer is a good operator toy, but doesn't often bring quantifiable benefits.

There is a lesser known saying 'Precision agriculture makes money for all - except the farmer'

It's true too!!

 

[Will 1594]

A quid an acre saving, maybe a sniff more.
What did it cost you? 9 grand?

I looked at vari rate seed & fert a few years ago, as the 'next step'.
For what it was going to cost, and the hassle creating maps, dealing with invariably unreliable tech, I decided the money was better spent improving fertility by other means.

Autosteer is a good operator toy, but doesn't often bring quantifiable benefits.

There is a lesser known saying 'Precision agriculture makes money for all - except the farmer'

It's true too!!

But your yeilds go up spud , cause your farming less acres , less overlap
Sprayed rape off first year here , they never had steering , and set in on ditch side with gps , and when to other side ,had lost 1and half tramline across 40 acre

 

[sodbuster]

A quid an acre saving, maybe a sniff more.
What did it cost you? 9 grand?

I looked at vari rate seed & fert a few years ago, as the 'next step'.
For what it was going to cost, and the hassle creating maps, dealing with invariably unreliable tech, I decided the money was better spent improving fertility by other means.

Autosteer is a good operator toy, but doesn't often bring quantifiable benefits.

There is a lesser known saying 'Precision agriculture makes money for all - except the farmer'

It's true too!!

Most tractors come guidance ready nowadays so just had to buy a receiver and pay a small annual subscription. Where do you get 9k from?

 

[Spud]

But your yeilds go up spud , cause your farming less acres , less overlap
Sprayed rape off first year here , they never had steering , and set in on ditch side with gps , and when to other side ,had lost 1and half tramline across 40 acre

Don't be daft man, the heap is the same size, as is the field.

If you gain 1.5 tramlines across 40ac, the drill operator needs an arse kicking. Why didn't the spray driver doing the dessication follow the existing tramlines? Way more knocked out than saved, for no benefit, particularly if the sprayer has section control.
Just because it's there, you don't always have to use it, that round thing in front of you moves the wheels when the sprayer is spraying too you know!!

I guess it depends on the starting point...

 

[Spud]

Most tractors come guidance ready nowadays so just had to buy a receiver and pay a small annual subscription. Where do you get 9k from?

Receiver, cab console, nav controller, signal.

 

[Will 1594]

Don't be daft man, the heap is the same size, as is the field.

If you gain 1.5 tramlines across 40ac, the drill operator needs an arse kicking. Why didn't the spray driver doing the dessication follow the existing tramlines? Way more knocked out than saved, for no benefit, particularly if the sprayer has section control.
Just because it's there, you don't always have to use it, that round thing in front of you moves the wheels when the sprayer is spraying too you know!!

I guess it depends on the starting point...

There was no section control then ,just 4/6 , now 8/3 , and tramlines all grown in any way ,and new field into it blind ,
when you go spray neighbours and he says its 14 ha ,and you come out of field with some left , and gps says smaller , which do you question is right

 

[Spud]

There was no section control then ,just 4/6 , now 8/3 , and tramlines all grown in any way ,and new field into it blind ,
when you go spray neighbours and he says its 14 ha ,and you come out of field with some left , and gps says smaller , which do you question is right

The crop might be leaning into the trams, but there'd be none growing in the wheelings, so you'd still run more down.
If the man says it's 14ha, it's 14ha.

 

[snarling bee]

For combinable crops the first place to put GPS steering is on the drill tractor and secondly on the combine. I recon the saving on a big combine is at least half a combine size.

 

[Spud]

For combinable crops the first place to put GPS steering is on the drill tractor and secondly on the combine. I recon the saving on a big combine is at least half a combine size.

Blimey, the combine driver can't be up to much!

You all seem to forget to include the time lost waiting for signal, loading ab lines, rebooting, and general buggeration maintaining, servicing, training and operating the tech.

If the combine is a multiple width of the sprayer, it isn't hard keeping it full.

How many actually use the pretty pictures for any quantifiable benefit? (I mean yield maps!)
We used to swap the kit from tractor to combine for harvest before we had a weighbridge, and used to find the maps told you what you expected to see - in dry years, the heavy bits yielded more, and in wet years the reverse was true.

 

[snarling bee]

Its partly keeping the header full (our header was NOT a multiple of the tramline width), but its also making 'lands' the size you want, and skipping a width in short work to speed up turning.
The other major factor is being able to concentrate on the rest of the machine, rather than just steering, and being less fatigued.
When I first drove a combine we were doing 4kph with a 17' header, last harvest we were doing 6-10 kph in thin crops with 30'. A massive difference. Next year we have a 40' header rightly or wrongly.

I do agree that field maps show a farmer what he already should know, but In 20 years I have gone from 17 fields to 72, so it gets a bit more difficult to learn every poor bit.
Yield mapping will throw up some 'gems' occasionally to show customers the effects of blackgrass for example.