Planes vs Drones

[00:00:01]Good morning.

[00:00:03]Early, not yet bright. We're getting loaded up, getting ready to go spray smart with the drone. So, not going to do quite as much today as we did yesterday, or at least not this morning.

[00:00:12]Uh, but we're loading up to do at least 120.

[00:00:28]I think we are loaded up here. I do want to put some gas in the generators yet, but I've got that tote mixed up for 100 acres done.

[00:00:36]Everything's in it. This tote here, we've just got our boron um and some additives. I don't have the fungicide in there yet. We got that in the truck.

[00:00:44]We'll wait until we're ready for it. I um was talking to dad yesterday about my pH concerns and he pulled out a jug of miratic acid, which probably isn't the best to lower pH, but it'll work.

[00:00:59]So, we dumped a little of that in. I was going to find my tester and we're going to test our solution again. I haven't agitated this yet, but it was mixed pretty good as it was going in. There's no way.

[00:01:15]9.1. There's no way.

[00:01:22]How is that even possible? That's higher than what my water start says.

[00:01:29]And I put 20 ounces of muratic acid in there.

[00:01:33]Let me try my other tester.

[00:01:36]All right. Well, this one is the same thing, just blue. It says 9.1. So, maybe we need to agitate a little bit more.

[00:01:47]All right, let's get going here. Sun is just coming up here this morning. It's about an hour and a half later than we started yesterday. I would have had 50 acres done already yesterday. But that's okay. We're um we're we're don't have as much to do.

[00:02:03]Not in a big hurry. I can't get up at 4:00 a.m. every day. So, uh I shouldn't have to do much here. I got my agitation running. Our batteries are charging.

[00:02:12]Just getting set up. Fill the drone and get it in the air.

[00:02:16]6:39 a.m. First flight takeoff.

[00:02:20]Let her go. We got a little obstacle area right here. Uh we got this driveway that we've kind of left here for parking trucks and stuff cuz we're right on uh the US highway. Um and so we uh get the trucks off the road and have good access.

[00:02:36]Where are you going?

[00:02:38]Are we going to fly that far around just to get over here every time? Cuz we could have just went straight that way.

[00:02:44]I probably should have put it in as a non-lication area rather than a uh obstacle. All right, I'll have to manually fly it into the field that way and then hit resume next time.

[00:02:59]So, that's what it did. It just flew around my non- area instead of just going across it. Yeah, should have made it a gray instead of an obstacle cuz it's not really an obstacle, but it was already in like that from previous something here or another. I don't know.

[00:03:14]I don't know if I've ever done this field with a drone or not.

[00:03:17]Um, all of my maps, my boundaries and stuff are all in here from my John Deere. So, I imported them. So, like this is the next field we're going to.

[00:03:26]Um, but if you come up here, you can see maybe maybe not while I'm doing something. Yeah, there those are all of our boundaries and stuff are in there.

[00:03:37]So, I just select them and then kind of edit the margins and stuff and go. And I have a interior boundary mapped on here on John Deere. So, it probably converted that into an obstacle. Ah, we can see real good from up here. Look at that swirling. I love it.

[00:03:58]We get a real good shot when it's coming right towards us over here. A little closer.

[00:04:05]Nice. Looks good.

[00:04:08]There it comes. Here's our pass.

[00:04:11]Dang, this is cool.

[00:04:15]Just so we are running 2 and 12 gallons to the acre, not two. I don't do anything at two.

[00:04:35]Uh 28T spread width running 30 32 feet per second I think it is. So, um, seems like we're doing a pretty good job. You can kind of see that swirling pattern from the vortices that are the the props are causing that kind of gets it to swirl and push down into the canopy there. You can see it really good. Oh, I was watching the drone.

[00:05:03]That's pretty cool.

[00:05:07]When there's no breeze like this, I am running a little bit finer droplet. When it grease starts to pick up, I will increase the droplet size just to get it down into the camera. There you can really see the swirling. Dang, look at that. That is so cool. Watch.

[00:05:23]Um, yeah, I don't really want it drifting all over the field. I want it getting down into the canopy. If I can keep a finer mist, there's a chance that it gets lower into the canopy and a bigger droplet. But um a bigger droplet's going to fall faster and and get down and not blow her out. So that's what we play with wind speed.

[00:05:46]All right. Well, we are making progress here. We're about done with this field actually. Um doing the perimeter pass.

[00:05:52]I'm a little concerned we're going to run out of battery on this particular uh load. Down to 30% battery with three gallons still of the tank. So, but it's flying it off pretty quick making the perimeter heading back this way.

[00:06:05]Although it's clear back in the corner over there. So, empty equipped drone. Um anyway, I've had a few phone calls this morning or made a few phone calls about uh this um um pH deal with my water. So, I've talked to a couple of different suppliers. One of them has don't have citric acid. They have some other acidifier products. um another guy that does have uh citric acid that I think I might get some and try it. But I got a phone call directly from the uh the chemical sales rep for the Maravis Neo uh and he says that the manufacturer here is putting in a lot of pH buffers and pH is not that not important with this fungicide mix. So said a lot of retailers like to sell those products. So they kind of push the um you know the narrative that you got to have the right pH and stuff. The product that I'm using, he said it's not that important. It's not that critical.

[00:07:05]The product is not breaking down in the tank if the pH is too high. And so that's good. That gives me a little bit more confidence that we're doing the right thing here. Um, but that said, we're still going to try and uh um do some with some lower VH stuff and just see if we notice any difference. I sort of doubt we will. Uh, but I I'm not as concerned about it as I was initially when I tested it and saw a nine out of the gauge seal. So, that's good. Anyway, we're coming in for a landing. Should be our last tank load.

[00:07:37]Yeah. 9.4 gallons remaining in the field. So, this one will do it.

[00:07:44]Where are you going? Right there. All right. It's doing its perimeter around our obstacle here.

[00:08:06]Probably don't need to spray this little bit of corn right over here. Looks like crap. Anyway, saw that hole there.

[00:08:25]Not bad. It's good.

[00:08:31]Okay, let it finish. So, we are moving just I guess a mile down the road as the field starts a half mile. We're going to the far end of it. Back in off the road there. I think we'll make it with our uh our railing still up.

[00:08:46]Just get the drone go back down. Should strap it down probably to go mile down the road.

[00:08:52]Down at our next field here. This is the new farm. We've got uh 40 acres here. I backed in off the road so we can get as far away from the power lines as possible. We're in the middle of a mud hole, but the truck's on solid ground, so we should be able to get out. Okay.

[00:09:08]And I think we are ready to go. I'm going to put a little non-spray zone right here in this corner because one, I don't need to spray it and two, I'm sitting here. So otherwise, going to try to spray me. We don't need to do that.

[00:09:25]All right. So now we have a little spot in that corner.

[00:09:31]Take off. Let's go.

[00:09:36]Why aren't we going?

[00:09:40]aircraft too far. Oh, I got to update the home point. I didn't shut it off.

[00:09:45]So, I got to come in here and update the home point to the aircraft location.

[00:09:52]Now, it should go.

[00:09:55]There you go.

[00:09:58]It's got a maximum flight distance from it home point. I don't know what mine's set at 35.

[00:10:04]I had to extend it the other day when we were flying behind that one field.

[00:10:08]Wouldn't get all the far side.

[00:10:11]Now we're good. I shouldn't shouldn't spray here. I should say the corn the height difference.

[00:10:27]Come on. All right. Go.

[00:10:31]I didn't make my area big enough. That's all right.

[00:10:36]get off this little corner. It'll be fine.

[00:10:40]We uh my chemical tank here was just about empty. And I decided rather than pouring chemicals in there and moving my mixer over. I'm just pumping everything from that one into there. And I poured my fungicide back in the top of this tank. So, we're going to do that. Give it a second to mix up here. Let our batteries catch up. They're falling a little behind. Anyway, well, we're about done here. But this is the problem with half mile long fields. a 10 and a half gallon tank and a 2 and a half gallon per acre spray rate.

[00:11:10]>> Why did you break the aircraft?

[00:11:12]>> Not high enough.

[00:11:16]>> Okay, go.

[00:11:20]So, I have all of the stuff down on this end done, but we make when we're doing our regular stuff with a full tank.

[00:11:28]The drone goes down, it comes back, and it makes it halfway, and then it runs out. And so, now we have all these half passes over there that it's got to clean up. So, it's going to work on that. Uh, the question is, should I not fill the tank so we just make a full round and run out closer to the trailer? Should I spray three gallons to the acre and maybe that would just be one round. If I went down to two gallons per acre, we probably could make three passes, which puts us clear down on the other end. That's not any better.

[00:12:00]So, I don't know. I just been doing it this way and let it clean up the edges, the uh tails or whatever you want to call them. It's not the end of the world. It's just not quite exactly uh efficient when you have that half pass and the drone runs out far away. So maybe a T100 with a 26 gallon tank has uh enough capacity to make even two round three rounds. I don't know.

[00:12:25]Three rounds.

[00:12:27]Anyway, we're about done. Look it. Look it. Look it.

[00:12:34]No, I got them both.

[00:12:38]That was awesome. That was like the shot of the day. I don't know what field that plane is flying.

[00:12:44]But he's over there just on the other side of the field that I just sprayed.

[00:12:51]I think the neighbor next to me's got uh beans on both sides, though. Maybe we're getting a double shot of fungicide cuz he's spraying the wrong field. It could be the neighbor down the road another mile or two. I don't know. That's awesome. Okay, we're flying perimeter here. We're going to have one more tank load, but we're close to being done.

[00:13:10]They are fun to watch.

[00:13:13]So is this.

[00:13:16]So I've noticed for the last three or four weeks here at least, maybe a month.

[00:13:20]Yeah. Um the uh the the crop dusters pilots have had a very focused effort against the drone industry. They've been sharing lots of pictures of streaky fields blaming on the drones. And maybe there's some truth to some of it. Um, but they definitely are threatened. It feels like all the crop dusters got together at their winter meeting in Mexico and said, "Hey, how are we going to beat these drones?" And they've been all over social media and the internet trying to uh post pictures and just cutting the drones down.

[00:14:01]I apparently they're threatened.

[00:14:04]Personally, I I shouldn't say that I have no problems with the drones. I don't care if you want or the planes. I don't care if you want to use a plane or not. I have used planes in the past. The problems that I have with them aren't because of their application or their um uh the quality of the job they do. My problem with them is they come when they want to, not when I want them to. So, I can't control the timing. They use the fungicide that they want to use, not the fungicide that I bought in January for much less cost than whatever it's going to cost me uh in season. They're going to put in whatever additives they want to put in, meaning foliars, insecticide, all the stuff that I don't want, don't care to have and make me pay for it. It costs more than the drone. And then I don't get any notification of when they're coming. They just show up whenever they want and don't tell me anything about it. And then the ones that I've hired don't provide me with any kind of documentation, any maps of like this is our coverage. like they don't do the things that I'm asking them to do or what I would prefer to them to do. And with a drone, I can control it. I can do it when I want to do it. I can use the products that I want to put in. It cost me a lot less.

[00:15:14]And so that's why I've gone the drone route instead of trying to hire a plane because I had no control. I in fact, I went away from a plane to the haggy guy because I could control that more. He was more willing to listen to what I wanted rather than just, yeah, this is the way it's going to be. Take it or leave it. So, um, personally, I think if the drone people or the, uh, the crop dusters and the airplanes want to do more and they're threatened by the drones, they should probably improve their service and do a better job. And maybe it's better other parts of the country, but around here, that's what I have noticed uh, from the ones that I've tried to work with. For me, the drone works great. I have not seen the streaking in my fields. I have used it for lots of herbicide application, including burndown and wheat stubble with glyphosate, and it kills everything. There's no streaking out there. So, um, is it a 100% perfect job all the time? I'll probably not, but it's more than adequate for what I am trying to do. The drone has worked really well. I love the fact that I can do it myself and control this application. So, anyway, planes are still fun to watch.

[00:16:19]I got everything packed up. We're heading back to the farm. Um, I've got about enough to do 30 acres left mixed up in the tanks. So, I knew I was going to have more than I needed for those two fields. Um, I'm thinking we're just going to do some of the fields at home.

[00:16:33]Maybe do my plot field here. We've got to put some non-spray zones in there because we've got some high management, low management stuff. And, um, want to make sure I get those areas defined fairly well, which is going to be a little tricky, but I think we can get it. Ah, where did I leave off? I went back to the farm and dad was uh working on a tire for the backhoe. He had a flat. helped him finish that up.

[00:17:03]And then uh came down here to the plot stuff cuz I want to spray this plot field. And when I got here, there's a guy here with some boxes and pallets.

[00:17:13]So, I got that unloaded. And then a couple of the Golden Harvest reps pulled in at the same time. I had no idea they were coming. They were just here. We did some planning for the field they were having in a few weeks. Uh yeah. So, Then it was lunch time and I went and ate lunch in the house. Now we're just getting spraying. We're going to spray this. There's about 30 acres worth of chemical at this point. So spray that out and then we'll be done spraying for the day. So out here we have some uh high management low management check strips. And I need to not spray the low management side of stuff. So I'm going to use the controller. And we can actually mark points with where the controller is. It uses GPS. There we got nine satellites and good signal now.

[00:17:54]Eight. We'll wait till it gets to nine.

[00:17:56]Um, but I'm standing right in the split of one. So, we can mark on them all the points on this side. And then I think I can draw straight lines to where the points on the other side need to be. And we're up to 10. So, uh, yeah, I need my hands. All right. So, it turns out that I can't draw lines straight enough to do that. But what I could do was put the drone in the air. And I marked the points on this end of the field by with the controller by standing where I wanted the points. And then I lined the drone up right behind me. And we just followed the rows in our camera all the way to the other end of the field and got to that end. And then we marked a point where the drone was and that worked. So now we're flying back to the trailer. It was empty. Empty, but we're going to load her up and uh refill.

[00:18:37]You just hover there until I get over there and make sure you're landing.

[00:18:40]Okay.

[00:18:42]>> Landing suspended. It usually does all right, but sometimes it's off just a little bit. And the last thing I want is half the landing gear on the trailer and the other half on the edge and it falls off. You know, come on.

[00:19:00]Guess I should have stayed parked down by the road. It was going to fly all the way to the end. But anyway, there's our two non-spray zones. We are spraying across them. So, it's not just going to skip over. It's going to uh shut the spray off and fly right over it. So, it should work. We'll kind of watch it and see what we get. But best I'm going to do. We are going to spray right over the pumpkins, too, cuz pumpkins like fungicide and boron as well. Spraying off.

[00:19:31]Spring off.

[00:19:39]Spring.

[00:19:40]Is that perfect? Probably not. It's going to work. Yep.

[00:19:46]You can see some of the differences in our genetics out here. Zoom back out a little bit. That one's got a much lighter colored tassel than this one.

[00:19:54]You can see some different colors in the the streaks from the uh different varieties and hybrids out here. So, that's kind of neat to watch.

[00:20:05]Overall, corn looks really good. Looks really good.

[00:20:09]Got some brown silks out here.

[00:20:12]103 day. Interesting.

[00:20:22]Just about done.

[00:20:24]Finish this field here. I probably got I got this tank load and then half another one maybe. And our tank is empty. So, we're just from right here going to go and fly this middle field. Um I got the plot field done. And if we would have sprayed the whole thing, I probably would have used it all.

[00:20:40]We have test strips. So, um, yeah, there. So, we did the front part. We're going to go just do some in this back field until we run out. We'll finish that probably tomorrow. We'll see what the rain's like. But, uh, uh, yeah, chances of rain tonight into tomorrow. So, we'll see what the morning looks like. If the weather's good, we'll spray some more. If it's not, we won't.

[00:21:04]Um, but this will be it for today.

[00:21:06]Breeze is picking up a little bit. It's not too bad yet, but just enough that it makes me not love spraying with a drone.

[00:21:13]So, we did what we wanted to do today. I think now that I'm done with the drone, we're going to go and do some mowing this afternoon. So, we've got the 7520 hooked up to the John mower. Um, I want to hit a couple of roadsides and then end up at the fields that we sprayed yesterday. We've got all those filter strips and stuff and they need to get sprayed. They need to get sprayed now.

[00:21:31]So, or not sprayed, um, mowed and they need to get mowed, you know, in the next week or two. So, we're going to go do that. Now, this is the tractor we've been having some overheating troubles with the transmission. And I mentioned that the other day, and somebody said a couple of things, something about a pump somewhere and something about a valve you got to open to let some coolant drain into the transmission cooling system or something. So, I'm looking it over, but I haven't found anything yet.

[00:21:54]So, we do have some lines coming out of our radiator here. Obviously, we've got the main one for the engine.

[00:22:01]Big line going back in. Yeah, that's it up on the top.

[00:22:06]Um, this is a airline.

[00:22:10]Anyway, we've also got these two smaller ones right here. And if you follow these hoses around, particularly this one goes down there. And I'll have to get underneath and see where that goes. Then we got another one coming up and it goes into here. Now, I'm pretty sure this is that's an exhaust cooler, isn't it? Cuz that is tied to our turbo over there.

[00:22:33]So, I don't think that's what we need.

[00:22:36]Yeah, that's that's missions control stuff, I think.

[00:22:41]So, I want to trace this other line.

[00:22:44]Uh, this one goes into here. What is this for? I don't know. But it's got the other end of that coming out of there.

[00:22:52]So, I don't think that's it either.

[00:22:55]We've got this line. This is our water pump. Where's that one go?

[00:23:00]Cuz if we come back over here and we get down underneath here, there's a transmission cooler somewhere, isn't there?

[00:23:14]I don't know. I might pull in front of the shop where it's not stones to crawl through.

[00:23:20]See, I just I don't know enough about these tractors to be able to do this, apparently. Okay. I believe this is our transmission oil cooler. And I believe these are coolant lines. They cross over and they're some of those lines that come from the front up there, but I don't see any valves anywhere. So, I don't really know what I'm looking for. Well, anyway, I don't see any valves. Looking at our radiator from here, looks just fine. Like, that's pretty darn clean if you ask me.

[00:23:53]Can see all the way through.

[00:23:56]I was going to clean it up, but I don't see why it would need it.

[00:24:01]We do have some screens here, and these do get dirty from time to time, so we pull them out and clean them off. But even that's not horrible.

[00:24:16]The other one doesn't come out all the way unless you got the tires turned, which I don't.

[00:24:22]So, I guess we're going to run it. If anybody has any ideas or suggestions or knows to tell me what to look for, I'm happy to listen. I could call the dealer, but they won't know any more than I do, I don't think.

[00:24:41]So, uh, we'll check the oil back here. Make sure we got plenty of hydraulic oil.

[00:24:53]Plenty in that sight tube. So, I don't know. I seems okay.

[00:25:00]Here's that little driveway I was talking about this morning. If this was mowed down before we were hairspraying, we would have set up right in there, but the grass was too tall. The leaves were too tall. I mowed down some giant rags there. Some of the corn that went with it, but not all of it. Uh, all right.

[00:25:14]Well, we're going to finish some roadsides up here and then we're going to lay down on those filler strips. So, this is not one that we mow very often.

[00:25:21]The state does a pretty decent job on this one. Yeah. See, I I'm not going to get around that pole. I don't know if I can do it. And it's a main road, so we generally stay off of it, but I'm trying to clean it up a little bit. Well, we're down here doing our mowing on these uh filter strips here. These are two of the fields that we tiled last year. And there are some new tile lines through these filter strips, including one that goes right down that way. And I drove over the whole dang thing. That was a little rough, but um we're going to knock these uh this grass down on all of this stuff. Mow it down, make it look nice, and just kind of keep any of the weeds and stuff knocked down so that it stays as mostly just grass. So, there's a whole bunch of them down here between the six or seven fields that we've got.

[00:26:06]Uh there's a ditch that kind of cuts everything. So, there's both sides all the way out here. Here, here. See? It's rough. There's a new outlet right here.

[00:26:20]So, we're going slow, bouncing. There's a surface inlet right there we don't want to hit. And then I think there's another tile line, right?

[00:26:32]That's not so bad. Okay.

[00:26:35]All right. Well, anyway, this is what we're doing. Why now? So, I mentioned that uh this has to get done here pretty quickly. Why? Well, all of these filter strips here are in a conservation program um through the Farm Service Agency, NRCS, one of those organizations, I don't know. Um but anyway, it's a conservation practice that we do to leave these grass strips along the ditch, right? Like I could plant corn right up to the edge of this ditch that's got water flowing through it right here if I wanted to, but that's generally not good uh stewardship of the land. Good good practice because we don't want the fertilizer or any of the chemicals or anything we're spraying on the fields to go directly into the stream, the water um you know through application when we're spraying and that kind of stuff. And so by putting 30 feet of grass in here, it gives us a buffer where we're away from that open water source. And also when we do get some rain, heavy rains like we had earlier this week or over the weekend here, uh the the any soil that might be moving or wash has to go through this grass and it slows it down and allows it to settle that out, filter that water before it gets into the streams and into the rivers. So that's why we leave these grass strips here. It's a nice little place for us to drive when we need to get from field to field or you know just to get around to looking for crops as well. So uh they have some benefit to us but because they are signed up through these through the the government organization I don't remember which one it is NRCS uh they have some rules and things that we have to follow. Uh, one of those rules is that we are not allowed to mow these filter strips uh, any time throughout the year except for between July 15th and August 1st here in Ohio.

[00:28:25]Couple that we have in Michigan is between August 1st and August 15th.

[00:28:30]And the reason that they give us for that is because of the nesting birds. We have to give time for the birds to nest and hatch and fly away before we mow down the grass.

[00:28:42]Okay. I don't know that that's a thing really too much. Maybe it is, maybe it's not, whatever. Um, but that's the rules and they pay us a little bit uh to put to maintain and put these filter strips in and and keep everything here. Um, it's a 10-year contract. And so, at least until that expires, that's the rule. That's what we have to do. So, sometimes the stuff they say makes sense. And I get the mowing or not mowing thing. It'd be nice to keep them mowed down and working nice all the time, but that's that's the way it is.

[00:29:13]Um, some of the other things that they make us do are dumb. Like, uh, few years ago, I I you may some of you may remember I talked about, uh, that they wanted us to plant some wild flowers out here. So, they made us come out in this uh big tall grass like what you see there, spray it with some glyphosate, an area like a 10x20 area, come out and plant wildflower plugs and um and let them grow. We did that. I think that was 3 years ago now. Um there are none of them left. None. And in fact, it a different government organization uh came out and was doing some maintenance on the the the ditch here and they were spraying some herbicide to control the broadleaf weeds and they uh they pretty well killed the whole wild flowersowers that we had planted.

[00:30:07]So, this is dumb. But anyway, those are the rules. That's what we do. We're going to mow it down while we got the opportunity to do so. Oh, my ride's here. So, we're going to leave this tractor here. Um, I didn't have any overheating issues today. So, that's good. But some days we do and uh this is a good job for Xander to do as he gets time. Just bring a truck down, work for a few hours until the tractor gets hot or get it done or whatever and have it be able to get back. Plus, Dad wants to do some burning some brush piles or something somewhere. So, anyway, we're just going to leave this here for now.

[00:30:42]All right, guys. It is 4:30 and I feel like I'm lazy for doing it, but I'm going home. I'm tired. I was up at 4 yesterday morning. I was up at 5 this morning. So, I'm going home. I'm going to go take a nap. Thanks for watching this one. I don't know what's going on tomorrow. Depends on the rain, the weather, and everything else. If it's not raining and the weather's good and it's not windy, we're going to spray. We're going to spray all day. Um, if it does rain, we're going to go drive around and look at some fields to spray uh on Wednesday.

[00:31:13]and we'll see. So, thanks for watching.

[00:31:16]Questions and comments, leave them down below. And uh we'll see you guys in the morning. Don't forget to like the video, subscribe to the channel. Appreciate it.

[00:31:22]See you.