[bigtimeoperator]

You guys that have run sectional control on your drills; how much does it actually reduce overlap? Currently my acres seed out about 10-12% higher than the acres that are actually there with a 54ft drill without section control and using autosteer. On the sprayer with section control I see around 3-5% overlap, but I like to error on the side of caution and the inside of headlands tend to get a bit more of a double spray. With seeding you have good visual site of your headlands and travel speed is much slower, so I assume the headland overlap with section control can be quite minimal if properly set up on the monitor.

Is it a realistic expectation to see seeding overlap in that 3-5% range with sectional control? I presume section control overlap reductions will be a function of the length of the sections and thus should be similar among mfg's using same section size. I have a new Bourgault drill coming and sectional control is something that I've been eagerly awaiting, but it is the only reason I'm going with a 7000 series tank instead of the 6000 series, to which there is a large price premium. I just want to make sure I can pencil out if the cost savings from reduced overlap to justify the higher cost of the 7000 series tank.

 

[vailcat]

I'm wondering too. Going to be about 30k to field install on my one 1890 40' with hydraulic drives. Wish I could on 60 but mechanical driven.

Trying to decide what to do. Here to listen

 

[techguy]

Section control seeding - pay back ? My Overlap is 6.2 % without sectional control. Did you get any hard numbers on what it actually saves you. Thx

 

[SWFarmService]

It really depends on your ground, my father inlaw has more potholes and wet spots, sloughs and crap to deal with that on his corn and bean acres alone he really belives he is saving around 8% while not everyone has to farm like that I think our savings would only be around 2% maybe less on more normal or drier years but it still adds up quick if you are putting in canola or beans, maybe too with wheat if you are running all your fert with it, 2% of a 1000 acres is 20 so say your at 5k and you reduce overlap by 1% thats still 50 acres with possible inputs of a 100$ thats 5 grand, it could pay for itself in one year if you reduced it by a little more, depends on your situation but like my father in law at suspected 8% with the corn planter that covers about 4500 acres a year he cant afford to be without it. Sure makes harvesting a lot nicer around the potholes too

 

[bussard]

Priced it out on new FC tank, they want 18 grand and I think it's only half the drill it sections..

Not sure if I have to many quarters that I would save a lot on, and sometimes it's good to see what double seed or fertlizer will do... Would help thou on the 100 gas wells I gotta go around, but payout would almost be the life of the tank

 

[Jake676]

if you have 100 gas wells, that should cover the 18k

 

[CRToney]

If it's rented land the gas wells don't earn you $. Often previous landowners will keep oil/gas lease revenue for up to 25 years. It's not just the wells it's 3 phase power lines you have to contend with too.

 

[Duchek]

Priced it out on new FC tank, they want 18 grand and I think it's only half the drill it sections..

Not sure if I have to many quarters that I would save a lot on, and sometimes it's good to see what double seed or fertlizer will do... Would help thou on the 100 gas wells I gotta go around, but payout would almost be the life of the tank

Why would it only be on half the drill? Can't see that as there is an electric motor on each run.

This is probably our 8th year or so year with sectional on our nh3 on our drill and our first with sectional on our air tank. It's probably saving us 8 to 10 percent on our air tank, little less on the nh3 because that is only five sections compared to 8 on the air cart. It pays for itself quite easily and that is the reason why the manufactures charge so much for it.

 

[Kurt]

After two season of SCT I would say , it saves money but it creates more headaches .
Any drill smaller then 60 ft I would say forget about it.

 

[Don Boles]

After two season of SCT I would say , it saves money but it creates more headaches .
Any drill smaller then 60 ft I would say forget about it.

I'm going to agree and furthermore time will tell how junky these systems are.
Because I think some of them are going to be troublesome.

 

[SWFarmService]

18k!! You've got to be kidding me? Right? I hope, probably not, I figure with electric shut off section control on my NH3 and section lifting I would be under 8k doing it myself, the accuboom setup with the raven I am putting on the drill would be the most expensive part coming in at about 3g's and the hydraulic valves and NH3 valves being the bulk of the rest cause I am using the variable orfice setup from Hinniker.

My plan is the accuboom will run NH3 sections, tied to the hydralic valves with a whisker switch on one shank of each wing than tied to the electric cylinders on the meter assembly, this will take me some time to biuld but you would think originally installing it and having everything set up once it would be really simple, but like for me I have to make 3 new meter housings witch will be the harder part but be a nice upgrade for my cart because the steel ones on there are about toast so I will be using stainless.

I am investing about 35-40k in it this year but it will have all the goodies of a new one without the new price tag. This will be mostly electronics cause the loup VR setup sucks IMO, raven is still working on getting all the stuff figured out on their end and I still have to decide weather I want can/bus or ISO, both have there pros and cons, ISO is apealing because when its time to hitch on the planter I would have to do nothing but I like how screen pages dont get busted up with can/bus

 

[hardpars]

I think the 18K bussard is talking about is for the current cnh tanks. Half the roller can stop.
Been thinking about this myself. The seed hawk website has a program that you can look up your own fields on. Then is simulates with and without sectional.
I agree with above statements that a lot, maybe most times there will be hastle frustration. If the return is minimal I would not go looking for headache. I don't think for us it would pay back too fast. That being said it is awesome on sprayer and wouldn't want to be without. Once it works that well it will be great.

 

[draww8]

Not sure of the "hassels" everyone is talking about. We ran a Deere tank with sectional control this spring. We had no issues, it worked great. We also seed with 2 drills in the same field. The other one is a 9 year old Flexicoil. Both units were communicating through Deeres "Machine Sync". So wherever either drill had been, the Deere section control would automatically shut on and off. Worked 100%. Sent the Deere tank to do the odd shapes, and non full widths of the field. Was huge savings this year with Enbrige pipelines angled right of way still a $&@$ing unreclaimed impassible mess through a third of our land this spring. ( been a year now ). The attached picture shows an example of the seeding coverage map. Non section drill is light blue, and shows much more overlap.

 

[V876]

It pays for itself quite easily and that is the reason why the manufactures charge so much for it.

They charge so much for it because They Can. :wink:

 

[wheatking]

Salesman told me, of his customers who had sectional control the minimum saving was 5% max he saw was approx 15% average was approx 7.5%. I call schmotzie on that, or at least in my area.

On my farm average saving was approx 1.5%. Worst field was approx 4%, best 0.4%, The field in the pic was 550 acres and we went straight through approx 4 sloughs that other years we would have had to go around. I figured savings would still be bigger as it has no straight edge as it is bordered by a creek on both sides. SC savings where a whopping .08%. I have what I thought was fairly sloughy land having to go around approx 2-3 sloughs/160 acres and this year it was maybe 1. So maybe in a normal year I could double my savings to 4%

I grow what I hope is a lot of malt barley and I hope the big savings are in lodging prevention on the headlands.

 

[West Central]

Most of our fields are 320 acres or more and all square with not much to go around. We seed in same fields with 2 xtc's one is a 76 other is a 50 ft. On the final pass if it's a small strip the 50 foot takes it. We find overlap very minimal and won't be getting section control on the drills. Depends on your fields I would say.

 

[jd4720]

Have to agree with West Central - it totally depends on your fields. I don't know where wheatking farms, but in south east Sask 2-3 sloughs/160 acres would be prime real estate! Granted a lot of the sloughs we have at the moment weren't around 10-15 years ago.
This was our first year with SCT on the farm and we certainly noticed the savings given what we had budgeted for based on previous years and what we actually ended up using this spring. I spent a lot of time last winter on the Seed Hawk website using their SCT simulator and came up with a projected average SCT savings around 7% for most of our farm. Obviously it varied quite greatly (see attachments) but based on the savings we're seen from the boom shut off in the sprayer it works out to a pretty similar number. I'd have troubles justifying the cost (at the moment) for SCT if your savings were going to be 3% or less, but depending the number of sloughs and size of your farm, it can add up pretty quickly. And pretty much every player in seeding market seems to be moving that way so you would have to think the price will become more competitive.

 

[AeroSpray]

Most of those claiming a large percent saving of overlapped seeding with sectional control could realize most of the savings by using care in their field patterns.http://www.thecombineforum.com/foru...air-drill-sectional-control-savings-image.jpg
This picture shows the entire field and all its obstacles circled by a large drill three times in concentric laps of increasing radius, many of which cut off otherwise full length straight passes.

Sectional control is saving a few inputs and costing a lot of time because it promotes extra turns and driving with shanks not seeding.

 

[Duchek]

Most of those claiming a large percent saving of overlapped seeding with sectional control could realize most of the savings by using care in their field patterns.http://www.thecombineforum.com/foru...air-drill-sectional-control-savings-image.jpg
This picture shows the entire field and all its obstacles circled by a large drill three times in concentric laps of increasing radius, many of which cut off otherwise full length straight passes.

Sectional control is saving a few inputs and costing a lot of time because it promotes extra turns and driving with shanks not seeding.

Please explain how my sectional control caused me extra turns and wasted my time??? Especially when it saved me $70 grand on inputs.

I can see that it wouldn't pay for people with straight up and down land but when you start getting 30-50 potholes or sloughs on a quarter the savings add up very quickly.

 

[skgrain]

trying to figure out what aerospray is meaning. It must be that he means you should do the straight passes on either side of a slough first and then go around slough after. And when going around the whole field that you should snap on the line while doing the sides that are parallel to your main pattern. Elementary my dear watson. we all do that.