Something new to rc

[Acadieman]

Sounds likes a tough go this harvest season. Calgary seemed to be a world of hurt with the fresh snowfall too.

How's the new harvester operating?

[Lil Giants]

Having a few electronic/hydraulic issues with the auto header height, the Honey Bee draper header is not following the ground contour as smoothly as it did with the 3 previous combines it was on. I haven't determined yet if it's the combine's software or the potential meters on the header itself... combining 1 day a week for the last month makes it difficult to fine tune the combine, as I try not to waste any time while it's good cutting weather.

30% chance of rain tomorrow... it's been cloudy & cold all week... some guys were talking this morning of trying canola this afternoon... my yard is still a bit muddy, I doubt the spr wht is dry, maybe I try some brown mustard tomorrow to see where it's at for maturity.

I dug thru junkyards this morning looking for brake pot bolts & found 3 useable bolts, the rest were seized in the pot. I found 3 new ones at a couple trk part stores. Finish getting this tractor/pup ready to go this afternoon in case it's too soft for the trk to travel about the field. I ordered a remote camera this morning to help with backing up to the auger, but it won't be here till Monday.

My brother lives in Calgary, I haven't spoke to him yet as to how much the snow has damaged trees in his yard. But yeah, a lot of down trees, a lot of power outages! The area saw nearly two feet of dense snow. I'm sure all the crops in the surrounding area will be flat on the ground! My cereal crops are leaning southward pretty bad, I may have to cut at angle, which will be a little rough crossing the seed rows... I still have more than a 1000ac of spring & winter wht to do yet. The oilseeds are still upright.

[TRUCKMAKER]

Hi Joe,
My wife grew up on a farm in central Illinois. She is curious what you mean when you say "cereal crops". We could only guess.

Kent

[Lil Giants]

Cereal grains - spring wheat, winter wheat, durum wheat, rye, CPS or Canada Prairie Spring wheat (soft white wheat, high starch, great for ethanol production, also great for animal feed), barely, oats, triticale (animal feed crop)... I'm sure there's other cereals to add to the list, but that's what I have grown over the yrs.

Oilseeds - Canola, soybeans, yellow/brown/oriental mustards, yellow/brown flax. There's a new variety of mustard in recent yrs that is use in the manufacturing of jet fuel from its extracted oil, I can't remember what it's called.

Pulse crops or legumes - yellow/green peas, red/green lentils, kabuli/desi chick peas is what's grown in my area.

[TRUCKMAKER]

Originally Posted by Lil Giants

Cereal grains - spring wheat, winter wheat, durum wheat, rye, CPS or Canada Prairie Spring wheat (soft white wheat, high starch, great for ethanol production, also great for animal feed), barely, oats, triticale (animal feed crop)... I'm sure there's other cereals to add to the list, but that's what I have grown over the yrs.

Oilseeds - Canola, soybeans, yellow/brown/oriental mustards, yellow/brown flax. There's a new variety of mustard in recent yrs that is use in the manufacturing of jet fuel from its extracted oil, I can't remember what it's called.

Pulse crops or legumes - yellow/green peas, red/green lentils, kabuli/desi chick peas is what's grown in my area.

Thanks for info!

[RCTech9]

Sorry to hear about your long harvest Joe. I like your Tractor / Pup setup.

[RCTech9]

Were you able to get most of your crop out of the field Joe?

[Lil Giants]

I have about a day's worth of cutting left to do... this afternoon was 4hrs & 3 trips to town for parts to fix the knife drive... and right when I quit @10pm I discover a bearing failure on the rotary screen drive, I hope they have parts in stock & get it running by noon so I can finish tomorrow.

[Lil Giants]

DONE!!!

..but not without another two trips to town again today for various parts on the header. The air temp dropped about 10 degrees the past two days over the two previous & made the flax straw difficult to cut...

Overall this crop yr was kind of a dismal one b/c of excessive rainfall in June with very little sunshine, drowned & thinned a lot of crop in its infancy, then excessive rains throughout later August & September bit into crop quality with staining, sprouts... I'll pretty sure I'm still in the black for the yr, but not by much...

Never did have to use that tractor/pup, thank goodness, I think it would have really slowed down production!

Go out on Monday with the combine to do a little mowing... remove the clean grain & return doors, close off the sieves to mow off several weedy patches I had to cut around in the mustard... the mustard is really sensitive to moisture, dry is under 9%... green seeds from kochia & pig weed could cause hot spots in the bin & spoil the whole the bin in short order if left unchecked. I have temperature cables in the bin that I can plug in with a monitor outside to check for any such hotspots after I turn the fan off. I'll be checking all my bins weekly till xmas.

[Stuff]

Joe! You gonna make it to Estevan for the show? Lots of trucks this year!

[Lil Giants]

How many trucks? Is there more than 3 yous now?

Are you gonna have REAL dirt or rubber dirt?

[Dieselchopper]

Sorry rubber and grain. Cleanup is to much for only a couple guys.

[Lil Giants]

Here's a vid showing my Apache 1220 sprayer from last spring... you can see near the start of the vid all the water in my corals.

http://youtu.be/N33HgUR1omc

[Acadieman]

How fast does the sprayer go? Seems to trot along at a good pace.
Good amount of water, think it'll go away this Spring?

[TRUCKMAKER]

Thanks for posting Joe, as always lots of questions, the brown fenced areas I take are your corals, do you do livestock also?
When your spraying does the computer control the throttle/speed for proper application or just steering?
One more, is the green on the screen the area that's been sprayed?

[Lil Giants]

Top speed is suppose to be 36mph, but I have after market tires on it that are quite a bit wider & a bit taller, according to the GPS top speed is 42mph. I spray full throttle in 4th gear, speedometer on console says 18mph, GPS says 22.4mph.

It's gonna take a few drought yrs to make all that water go away. Last two summer's rainfall accumulations have been 18inch each yr. I took these pics yesterday, the water level currently is a bit lower than last Spring judging by the shoreline, but Spring runoff might not be done yet.







Kent, I did have 150 head beef cows, mostly red Angus until Dec 2011 when I had a herd dispersal.

The Raven computer has an auto rate controller that will match the correct volume of water/chemical to whatever speed I'm travelling. Most of the spraying I do is 5.9us ga/ac, some chemicals require 10us ga or I'll spray either liquid fertilizers up to 13us ga/ac or foliar fertilizers up to 8us ga/ac. A change in speed, the rate controller will open/close a valve to match the volume needed & will also vary the water pressure too almost instantly, maybe a 1 to 3 second delay depending on how sudden the change in speed.

The auto steer is a seperate controller, but it is tied into the primary monitor.

Yes, whatever is painted green is what has been sprayed. There is a few other colors too, red will appear when the volume drops more than 20% below target, usually when the tank is nearly empty & sump sucking air occassionally. Purple when volume is 20% heavy, usually when I have to slow down suddenly to cross a washout. I have auto shutoff, the boom is split up into 5 sections, when 100% of 1 section is on the green, that section will shut off automatically, keeping overlap to an absolute minimum. For headlands I have the shutoff delay at 0sec & turn on 4sec advanced, I don't want any misses.

[TRUCKMAKER]

Thanks for the info Joe, it's really interesting how technology has advanced farming!

[Lil Giants]

So I finally got my air drill home yesterday (gone 2 weeks), hooked up to Big Red and activated the hyd lever for fan/manifold/auger... even though 3pos lever on seed cart was set to fan, apparently some oil still flows through auger circuit... and my view from the cab to see the conveyer with air drill in transport is not great... about 20 hyd fittings & I forgot to tighten only one - sprayed the seed cart tank & conveyer & air drill... ohhhh what a mess in less than 3secs, probably less than half a gallon, but it painted everything with oil.







With the tube screw auger before, that double pivot arm off the main arm was 16 inches length, but with this rectangular shaped conveyer that arm had to be 40 inches and with the now added leveraged weight it made it impossible for me to manually move that arm out away from seed cart so I could get the discharged end of the conveyer to clear the top railing & tank fill doors. So then I had no choice but to add a 2" bore, 12" stroke hydraulic cylinder.

I got my welder/fab man coming tomorrow to change the hyd cyl mount on the main arm so when the cyl is fully retracted it pulls that 40" arm back even further. Plus I need a metal hanger added to other end of 40" arm to support the hyd hoses up out of the way of pivot points.







The conveyer needs to be atleast another foot to the right of the picture so I can get my tank lids open to fill.



The supports for transport were simple enough to fabricate. I just got to add puck board for a wear/rub strip where the aluminum contacts on the upper & lower steel support.



The conveyer itself runs awesomely quick & smooth & QUIET!!! hmmm sweeeet

[RCTech9]

Whats been going on lately Joe? We got this years wheat crop in the bins.

[Lil Giants]

I desiccated some durum yesterday, do some more next week, it'll be Sept 1st before that's ready to combine... I'll have to desiccate the flax too, probably start mid Sept... so much hail this yr on the entire farm, the durum I was spraying yesterday, majority looked short & thinned out...

This week I combined what little peas I could salvage from the hail, about 30ac, got most of my seed back from 400ac planted.

Some guys around here are harvesting fantastic crops & have been going since Aug 1st, some are better than half done already...