AMAZONE in in Great Britain
WindControl & ArgusTwin for the most accurate spreading yet!
Simon Hinchliffe farms near Maltby in South Yorkshire and is currently on his third AMAZONE spreader in a row, swapping them in every 5 years or so. His current ZA-TS 4200 Profis Hydro is on it’s third season this year and is equipped with all the bells and whistles such as ArgusTwin and WindControl. “We bought this spreader when fertiliser prices jumped considerably just over 3 years ago and decided to go with the ArgusTwin and WindControl to make our application window wider and particularly make urea application more efficient” remarked Simon. Further commenting “The WindControl system just works in the background and shows you on the screen what it’s doing to compensate for the wind and also alerts you when the wind is too high and it’s time to stop”.
The AMAZONE mySpreader app contains fertiliser settings for thousands of different fertilisers as well as the built in AI assisted EasyCheck tray test. Simon uses the mySpreader app for finding initial fertiliser settings and then does a tray test with the EasyCheck mats, “we usually do about 2 tray tests per products per season because its quick and easy to do and with this method we’ve never had any problems with striping or lodging”.
Simons initial change to an AMAZONE spreader was due to the more gentle Soft Ballistic System meaning that cheaper fertiliser doesn’t break up during distribution at wider working widths. Simon spreads at 32 metres and has plenty of hilly fields, he has also fully utilised his AMAZONE spreader to allow him to save money by purchasing cheaper fertiliser. ArgusTwin comes into play here, with automatic fertiliser distribution monitoring, making adjustments in realtime. When using fertiliser of a lower quality it is not uncommon to see great variations from bag to bag, meaning simply that one bag may be thrown further than another due to density, size or hardness of the prills. ArgusTwin uses an array of radar sensors on either side of the machine to detect these changes and independently change the settings for either side of the machine to maintain an accurate distribution at all times.
A recent addition to the team, Ian, concluded by saying “I’ve just started using this fertiliser spreader, and I'm getting on with it quite well. It seems to be nice and easy to use and pretty much works straight out the box with only a little bit of setting up. Everything just works”.