by Lucas Veale

We recently added a new MeterMax Ultra test stand at the Assumption location. After going through several meters we have found some items to check on your own planters. Double eliminators will develop a slight groove over time and will cause inconsistent behavior on the stand. The hub setting also seemed to be very critical to get set correctly in order to maintain consistency. We found that the hub needed to be run rather snug against the housing for best performance, especially with a non-Pro-Series. We found that a vac setting of around 16 worked well for small and medium seed and 17-17.5 for larger seed (57 lbs). These were all equipped with the John Deere ProMax 40 seed disks. We require at least 3 consecutive runs or 99.7% or better in order to pass a meter. We are have also tested Precision E-sets and Kinze finger pickup meters and we look forward to learning more about these meters as well.

Our customer and internal training is wrapping up for the winter season. We still have our Technology Expo on March 11th. We will turn our attention to on farm, individual training with customers who made recent purchases.

We have several acres of boundaries and A/B lines to run for customers with the gator mapping service before planting arrives. Looks like next week should have some weather that will cooperate with us so we can get a good start on this task.

We are receiving a lot of questions on the new planter Deere just introduced at Louisville Farm Show. It will be at our winter Expo for all to see and touch. We also included it as part of our salesman class. It will require 5 hyd hookups and 60gpm to operate. It is electric drive and is capable of planting speeds up to 10 mph without sacrificing seed placement.

We continue to have success talking with customers about converting their Kinze planters to ISO so they can run through a GS2 or Gs3. This cleans up the cab and allows them to document automatically without other harnesses.

Vandalia recently installed a direct injection kit on a 4940 sprayer. They found a few tricks and tips for installation. If anyone gets the opportunity to install a kit on a 4940, they would be a good resource to consult for advice on the installation.

Atwood installed a Surefire Fertilizer system on a 1770NT. It is available in either as a hydraulic or electric drive depending on the size of the planter and the flow needs. They commented that the installation was a smooth process and it hooked right into the rate controller.

Wireless Data Transfer will be free to those customers this year that have JDLINK Ultimate and RDA. Most customers do not have RDA but will only run about $100 or less to upgrade to this if they already have JDLINK Ultimate subscription.

Used AMS equipment continues to be in high demand. Used receivers and ATUs are especially hard to find.