Machinery
I have a chance to put up 7 systems to cover 500 acres 2 full circles and 5 windshield wipers ranging in 1280 -1750' in length's to get to 500 acres New systems are $90,000 each and too many things with production and marketing need to go perfect to service the debt on that much new iron. So I am looking for used pivots. I have 3 pivots now and we generally run 4-500 hours a year in corn in July and August to meet crop water needs. Edible beans or Soy beans only need 3 shots of .75" a week in August to make a super good bean crop. I have a Valley dealer grew up 4 miles away from the project. So looking for Valley's then Zimatics or Reinkes. T-L's are a hard no.
So would you put up corner arms and upgrade to gps on a used corner arms and how much headaches are the corner arm add on. or should I just ad more windsheild wipers to the project ?
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Have a neighbor who put up 2 brand new corner walkers. He would not do them again. They are buried wire type, not GPS. Even if the corner machines work they do not water evenly. It has shutoff on every sprinkler to evenly apply water as folding but the ground under it is never watered correct. I couldn't imagine trying to make 30 shutoffs work correctly, the one on the end gives me plenty of heada...
I would suggest going with more wiper pivots. Corner arms are good but 90 % of the time that there’s a problem with the pivot it will be the corner arm. Cost wise I’m guessing you could be about equal and I think you would find the wipers to be a simpler solution.
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I think adding GPS to the swing arms is a safe bet. Not much has changed structurally to each of those OEMs designs so they retrofit equipment they have for guidance works well. GPS offerings have been around long enough now that you shouldn't have issue with them shutting down due to lost signal. ****** uses Deere/Starfire, ******* uses Hemisphere with L1/L2 frequencies on both the arm and base...
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