by Lucas Benning, Vandalia, IL

Wheat harvest has started in southern Illinois with a few guys getting started before the rain hit yesterday. Wheat this year is tough and is going to be hard threshing with some green spots still in the fields, but moisture and yield looking good. The field that I was in on Monday was testing 14% moisture and 80-90 bushels per acre for yield. Luckily we were able to receive a little rain yesterday. Two tenths to an inch in most areas will definitely help the corn and beans since we were starting to see a few cracks starting to show up in the ground.

I got the chance the other day to help get a customer started and play around with a 9510R and dual pan scrapers that is setup with iGrade. There are multiple modes within iGrade, but the 2 that we use are Plane Control for scrapers and Remote Control for ditchers. Using Plane Control with a function called Plane Calculator you can survey the area and it will give you a recommended slope and you can either accept it or change the slope. With the function One Slope you can set your desired slope and it will pitch it in the direction you tell it. You can also run Dual Slope where it will pitch it into a desired corner. All this is done by GPS and the scraper is controlled automatically with the addition of the application controller. RTK is a must with this system and it is recommended to be within 1 mile of the base station. If you are interested in what we may be able to do for you with a set up like this contact your local AMS specialist.  The setup below has only one receiver on the first pan and the operator has to control the second one manually. We can also set it up where both are controlled automatically.