by Josh Zuck

Well I have to say that winter has finally approached. We have been in single digit temps. and had about 3-4 inches of snow hit the ground yesterday.

We had some NH3 late last week and some chiseling. The frozen ground put a stop to that. May not see another window for that till the spring.

Had an issue with Wireless Data Transfer, where it would not send a farm. Customer had issues where it wouldn’t send a whole farm or only send parts of a field. The only way to resend is to go into Mydeere.com and find the date when that field was harvested and resend. It would take about 5 – 10 min. to send. Did have one field that would not send at all and had to use the USB to get it to APEX.

Had a GS3 locking up on an S-series combine. Updated combine and GS3 software and didn’t seem to help. Found that the display was 70% full. Export Data and cleared and that helped a lot.

Planters have been showing up and will be setting them up soon.

by Lucas Veale

Field work has pretty much come to a standstill due to weather conditions. Last week a select few farmers were trying to finish up tillage or NH3.

We converted a Kinze planter from a KPM monitor to an ISO configuration for use with a GS3/GS2. It was quite simple to accomplish and does not take a lot of time. The kit is around $2000 and it really cleans up the cab clutter. The customer can then also do mapping and variety locator. FYI, It does require the initial configuration of the monitor.

Jake Pippen has signed up several baler inspections. If you have customers that you would like for Jake to call about a baler inspection, please let him know. He also has contacted several customers about the net wrap sale in December. He also commented that he is seeing a relatively high failure rate of the net wrap brake pad. It would be a good part to have on hand for baling season. He also commented that many times the brake pad had an improper torque setting. Sixty lbs is the proper setting.

If customers are using a Harvest Tec applicator on their baler, they will need a different set of brackets when going to the 9 Series baler. Approximate price is $600 for the new bracket kit.

We have been going through several used planters the last couple of weeks. There is nothing too unusual to report. Probably the highest wear item on 5+ yr old planters is the gauge wheel arms. We have seen several of these that are really worn from lack of grease.

We are working on expanding our RTK network to the South. Lucas Benning and Matt Dehlinger have been actively seeking locations for network towers.

Autotrac controllers in Case tractors have also seen an uptick in popularity. Customers are using the existing Case autotrac components and running it with a GS3 display.

The mapping service has really been a hit with customers. They like the data they are receiving and that they don’t have to know how to operate Apex to get it. More and more customers signing up as they are seeking new ways to use their data as a management tool.

Don’t forget the GS3 incentive runs through the end of January.