Severn Agriculture Featured in Farmers Weekly
“Severn Agriculture works with a lot of Frazier/Kellands Agribuggies, which are fitted with RDS rate controllers, and these readily accept Teejet’s Boompilot kit.
Where they need to fit a new rate controller, they’ll often use Arag’s Bravo setup, which comes with a complete system for controlling the sprayer.”
Severn Agriculture begins most installs with a visit to the farm to suss out the sprayer, see how it is used and work out which equipment will be most suitable.
For a 24m boom, at least seven sections will be required to give a suitable level of accuracy, so sprayers with fewer sections than this will usually have additional ones added.
This is achieved by fitting extra valves and making the necessary adjustments to the pipework.
If there are plenty of sections available, it can be worth putting the two outer nozzles on their own.
These can then switch off when spraying the body of the field to take any drill overlaps into account.
The auto-section control module will then be wired into the rate controller and connected to the GPS screen.
The correction signal for this comes from a roof-mounted receiver running off a free Egnos signal with 20-30cm pass-to-pass accuracy, which is ample for the application.
One of the most involved jobs is calibrating the system so that the timings of the sections switching are spot on.
If this is done incorrectly, there can be more overspraying than is necessary or some unsightly missed triangles where the runs meet an angled headland.
Typically, the sprayer is filled with water and marker is used to work out when the spray comes out relative to when the sections are switched on.
Once this process has been completed, there is no need to adjust the settings, unless speeds are changed dramatically or the operator switches to using forward- or backward-facing nozzles.
If they vary their applications significantly, they might have separate calibration figures for each.
Case study: James Kent, Worcestershire
Keen to improve the accuracy of his spraying operations, Worcestershire mixed farmer James Kent decided to invest in a retrofit auto-section control system, which was installed by Severn Agriculture.
Initially this was fitted to his Frazier Agribuggy 5D, but it suffered fire damage shortly after and the system was transferred to a newer 1999 Phantom.
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This machine is powered by a 2.5-litre, four-cylinder, Land Rover 300 TDI engine mated to an automatic transmission and transfer box that delivers permanent four-wheel drive.
As for the spray pack, this has a 1,500-litre tank, 24m aluminium boom and, prior to the auto-section control system being added, five manually switched sections.
To give greater accuracy, two additional solenoid valves were added, along with extra switches on the control box.
This means the boom now has five 4m centre sections and two 2m sections on the break-backs.
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“The initial appeal of the system was that it would make our spraying much more accurate, but the fact that I don’t have to think about boom switching means the job is a lot more straightforward,” says Mr Kent.
“Once I’ve sprayed the headland, I can let it do its thing and turn my attention to the crop and looking out for blocked nozzles – I definitely wouldn’t want to go back.”
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The price to have the full system fitted was about £5,000 and he received £2,500 from a Severn Trent Steps grant to cover half of the cost.
Severn Agriculture calibrated the system as part of the installation, but he has played around with the delay settings for the boom so that it switches exactly when he wants.
“The only thing I wish we’d done is make the outer sections 1m rather than 2m so that there is a bit less overspraying.”
