Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | I have mapped tile lines with Ag Leader equipment. I have no experience with the Pro 700 so I'm not familiar with its capabilities.
With the Ag Leader equipment, I temporarily installed the display and GPS in my Polaris Ranger. One year I actually used my combine without a head on it. This actually worked well as I sat up nice and high, the equipment was already there and the combine provided a nice stable ride.
With the Ag Leader displays it is possible to create a planting configuration whose normal use is for recording crop varieties while planting. I used a planting configuration as a workaround for the tile mapping situation. When a planting configuration is used, it is common to use an implement switch to start/stop the mapping. This is not necessary for this application as the operator will want to start/stop the mapping at will so using the onscreen icon works well.
I setup a fictitious planter with a width of 5' or so. The reason for picking 5' is so the line on the screen is visible but yet small enough to be useful. I picked a crop type that is not normally planted in my area. I chose Peanuts. I created several Peanut varieties such as "Old Main", 10 inch, 8 inch, 4 inch etc. I then start to map by driving over or close by each run. I choose the "variety" that is appropriate for the tile I'm driving over. I enable the mapping by using the onscreen icon. As I drive beside the tile line, a line is drawn on the onscreen map. The line is the color associated with the Peanut variety I am supposedly planting at the time.
I can stop anytime and disable logging. I can then drive to another line and change the Peanut variety as needed. All the lines of the various colors are shown onscreen so one can be aware of what has been covered. On one occasion, I also used the field marks option to mark some intersections with old lines which were known but not fully mapped.
This data can be stored on the memory card or stick and read into SMS to make a printed map of the tile lines. After printing I either hand write or make a word processor document with other added information that is fresh at the time and might be useful in the future. I have even gone so far as to write down the lat/lon of some locations that I think might be helpful in the future.
I like using the fake planting configuration over using a tillage configuration as the planting configuration allows one to specify the various tile sizes by utilizing the variety idea. Making a tile map with a tillage configuration is certainly better than nothing but I feel the extra work of switching "varieties" is well worth it. There are likely other ways to utilize the equipment for tile mapping but this has worked well for me.
Having the satellite photo in the background helps visualize where the tile are in reference to to other landmarks such as roads, streams etc.
Edited by tedbear 9/13/2016 03:44
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SMS Basic
