Inaccurate drilling

[fenhayman]

Took a drive around the flat fenland in North Cambs and South Norfolk and was surprised to see so many gaps in the emerging cereals. Regular gaps between drill widths and small blocks missed altogether. Tram lines all appeared ok.
Am I right in thinking that in the days of conventional drills with disc markers such work would have resulted in a rocket from the boss and a lot of mickey taking from fellow workers.
Or am i wearing rose tinted specs?

 

[carbonfibre farmer]

Dunno.

We seem to have plenty of misses and overlaps with an old nordsten drill round here...

 

[David.]

I like to see perfect drills as much as the next man, but the reality is that come harvest there will be no difference. It's a pride thing I suppose ; 98% of passers-by don't know, and could not give a monkey's if it is drilled or not anyway.

 

[PSQ]

Took a drive around the flat fenland in North Cambs and South Norfolk and was surprised to see so many gaps in the emerging cereals. Regular gaps between drill widths and small blocks missed altogether. Tram lines all appeared ok.
Am I right in thinking that in the days of conventional drills with disc markers such work would have resulted in a rocket from the boss and a lot of mickey taking from fellow workers.
Or am i wearing rose tinted specs?

Do you do any drilling?

Because those that do generally don’t criticise others, because they know that *everyone* (apart from the ‘experts’ ) makes mistakes.

 

[DrWazzock]

Like a lot of farming jobs I'm often in a bit of rush to say the least. Rush into shed. Marker disc bearing is a bit wobbly. Oh sh!t I should have changed the bearing last season. But I'm not going to stop and do it now. I'll just drive carefully. Then I'm not the best with my eyesight anyway as I start to see double after a few rounds and aren't sure which mark to follow so some of the match ups are a bit wide some are bit narrow. Does it matter. Not really. Better to get the seed in the ground at the right time really though I do like to see nice well matched up straight rows.

There is a lot of stuff in farming done on a wing and prayer nowadays with time seeming to be very short and resources very limited. There will be a few rough edges. Some machinery has a knack of playing up when you are most under pressure as well. Sprayers, drills and fertiliser spreaders fall into this category. Usually something decides to leak, stick, or generally not cooperate when you need it most.

 

[Feldspar]

Took a drive around the flat fenland in North Cambs and South Norfolk and was surprised to see so many gaps in the emerging cereals. Regular gaps between drill widths and small blocks missed altogether. Tram lines all appeared ok.
Am I right in thinking that in the days of conventional drills with disc markers such work would have resulted in a rocket from the boss and a lot of mickey taking from fellow workers.
Or am i wearing rose tinted specs?

I'm afraid to say our farm looks bad this year (and did last year). Trying to run a less than 6m drill at 6m when it won't track consistently combined with not enough checking has left gaps everywhere. Using GPS around headlands and to switch seed automatically on and off has left more gaps than we had when using old fashioned markers. Makes drilling much easier when it works, but you need quite a bit of skill to drive the screen right!

 

[Spencer]

I always think anyone who’s never had a drilling mishap hasn’t really done any

 

[Bobthebuilder]

Surely if your getting as many misses when using GPS then it’s not set up correctly, blocked coulters is a matter of not checking them enough and full width misses can be both operator error or machine problem

 

[Feldspar]

Surely if your getting as many misses when using GPS then it’s not set up correctly, blocked coulters is a matter of not checking them enough and full width misses can be both operator error or machine problem

We have spent hours and hours trying to get ours sorted. Our problem is the drill seems to have a wandering offset and so the same settings in one field can be different in another. We also are trying to push a drill which isn't quite 6m (why John Deere didn't design it to be properly 6m I don't know) into a true 6m system, so it's already on its limits.

 

[Brisel]

The JD 750A is an Imperial machine modified for metric widths.

 

[Clive]

The JD 750A is an Imperial machine modified for metric widths.

We don’t have any issues with ours in RTK at all (but run the drill at 5.96m) - farm looks a picture, no misses or overlaps, drill drivers had a good Christmas bonus this time

 

[Brisel]

Lots of people using GPS for drilling around here now. Cockups are limited to ins & outs and headlands where they're using neglected bout markers where the skill has been lost by autosteer use.

For those of you who know where I am, a quick glance at Google Earth will show a few drill cock ups... I ran out of seed in a field of beans & missed 30 metres as I didn't go back far enough. Nice skylark plot!

 

[Brisel]

We don’t have any issues with ours in RTK at all (but run the drill at 5.96m) - farm looks a picture, no misses or overlaps, drill drivers had a good Christmas bonus this time

What width do you run your Horsch at?

I run my Claydon at 5.98m but that's not RTK, only an old SF2 setup. 2" offset needed, strangely for a perfectly symmetrical machine built with autosteer in mind.

 

[Clive]

What width do you run your Horsch at?

I run my Claydon at 5.98m but that's not RTK, only an old SF2 setup. 2" offset needed, strangely for a perfectly symmetrical machine built with autosteer in mind.

I think the Horsch runs at 5.98 (but will check) neither drill is a true 6m so even at RTK accuracy they need setting <6m - don't seem to struggle with symmetry so run no offsets, we used to years ago with our rapids though

 

[Brisel]

Before the X pattern on the System Discs, Rapids would always pull to one side as the front discs do more work than the back ones. Only a 2" offset on the Rapid too, though it varied with the depth of the discs.

 

[fred.950]

I haven’t got bout markers on either drill, add to that section control variable rate seed with poorly prepared maps and it’s normally technology that lets me down but I also suffer from human error occasionally! Normally next to the road

 

[Bury the Trash]

why even buy a drill


broadcast ...its the modern lowcost way..........and all done with no strakes whatsoever ....

 

[Clive]

this spring we will have auto turn enabled at drilling - with headland management i'm planning on replacing the driver with a bag of potatoes !

 

[Feldspar]

this spring we will have auto turn enabled at drilling - with headland management i'm planning on replacing the driver with a bag of potatoes !

No way of avoiding telegraph poles automatically yet though!

 

[Clive]

No way of avoiding telegraph poles automatically yet though!

we already have alarms set for poles, trees and hydrants etc so the operator will have to be woken up when it gets close to one !