Let's face it, technology is or can be troublesome. On the other hand, when it works, it's great.
Last year Son added "Auto Steer' to his tractor that's used to pull a planter. Except for a couple of glitches, it didn't work too bad so this year I got an upgrade from a simple screen with left and right arrows that told me which direction to steer to maintain the correct line and spacing. I picked up a few basic functions and have done fairly well--haven't run into anything. Makes the 12-16 hour days much easier. I still can't talk on my phone(because I can't hear it over the engine noise) but I did send a couple of texts while the tractor stayed right on line. I don't miss those days sitting on an open tractor with the sun broiling my brain while struggling to make straight rows.
No more lifting all those seed bags and no bags to gather up and burn at the end of the field, Most of our seed is delivered in 2000# bags and dumped into bulk bins from which the seed is transferred by air to the planters. We planted our 'north place' today. It would have taken 80 bags of seed to do that(two pickup loads) but we didn't have to lift a single bag.
Back to today's planting. Son got started about noon and I started around 2PM. My planter is smaller and more maneuverable so I do the smaller, tighter areas. After I got those cleaned up, Son put a compass heading of the line he was running on into my auto-steer console. He'd started from the east side of the field and I from the west side. At about 7PM , we met in the middle with less than 20 feet of misalignment.
'In the old days', it took my FIL close to a week to plant this farm. Son spent 7 hours and I spent 5. So the equivalent of one long day rather than an entire week.
Last year Son added "Auto Steer' to his tractor that's used to pull a planter. Except for a couple of glitches, it didn't work too bad so this year I got an upgrade from a simple screen with left and right arrows that told me which direction to steer to maintain the correct line and spacing. I picked up a few basic functions and have done fairly well--haven't run into anything. Makes the 12-16 hour days much easier. I still can't talk on my phone(because I can't hear it over the engine noise) but I did send a couple of texts while the tractor stayed right on line. I don't miss those days sitting on an open tractor with the sun broiling my brain while struggling to make straight rows.
No more lifting all those seed bags and no bags to gather up and burn at the end of the field, Most of our seed is delivered in 2000# bags and dumped into bulk bins from which the seed is transferred by air to the planters. We planted our 'north place' today. It would have taken 80 bags of seed to do that(two pickup loads) but we didn't have to lift a single bag.
Back to today's planting. Son got started about noon and I started around 2PM. My planter is smaller and more maneuverable so I do the smaller, tighter areas. After I got those cleaned up, Son put a compass heading of the line he was running on into my auto-steer console. He'd started from the east side of the field and I from the west side. At about 7PM , we met in the middle with less than 20 feet of misalignment.
'In the old days', it took my FIL close to a week to plant this farm. Son spent 7 hours and I spent 5. So the equivalent of one long day rather than an entire week.
