Sunday, June 6, 2010

June 6, 2010


View of the day-More of the same as Marilyn makes more dust...with proof that she is cutting a full 35 feet...and she thought Al had neglected his picture taking duties.


Well, the temps for the day had been forecasted to be in the 90's, and they were...until you added in the humidity then, once again we were into the 100's again.

We got out to the field and took a test around 10am, but it was too wet to start, so we thought we would find some place to get eggs for breakfast. We could see a truck stop about 5 miles from the field so we took a trip over, only to find out that the only thing there was the pumps...the building had burnt and there was a temporary trailer as an office. We then figured we might as well go into Vernon and try the breakfast burritos from a place that Keith had told us about...apparently they don't cook on Sundays, but they did send us over to the Brown Cow restaurant. We got there at 11:01, which meant we weren't going to get any eggs...and what do we know about Mexican food? It was a good meal and after we finished we went back out to the field.

It had dried down enough that we were able to get started and we didn't have to wait on trucks, even though they were both running to Altus. Once the cart was full, Al would get to drive the combine and get cool while Marilyn checked out the manuals for the combine. Yesterdays successful discovery of the boundary function on the monitor was topped by today's find.

When cutting terraces...the ridges in the fields that channel the water...you end up with all sorts of odd shaped pieces. This means the mapping software measures the amount cut by the input of the operator...so, Marilyn puts in a 35 ft header, and that she is cutting 34 ft, to allow for error. Once you get down to a pie piece, it is necessary to use the monitor to shrink the size of the header to the size of the swath for accuracy. This is done by touching the screen, but as the piece gets narrower, you have to match it on the screen. Not after today...

There is a function that automatically calculates the width of the swath according to the previous passes...it shrinks it down automatically and it doesn't matter if the patch is left, right or in the middle...it maps according to what you cut...BRILLIANT! Marilyn can't wait to see what other capabilities are hiding in the monitor.

We finished up the field and moved over to the next 80ac patch and made a couple of rounds on it to fill the cart before calling it an early night...well, earlier at least. It was another good day...135 acres...except for having to stop to blow out the engine air filter, the combine worked another impressive day in the heat.

And tomorrow the temps are going up again...

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