Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | I installed Ag Leader's Steady Steer (steering wheel turner) auto steer system in my Deere 9770 some years ago. It has its own controller and works with my Ag Leader InCommand which is used for yield monitoring. It turns the steering wheel for me based on AB lines. The AB lines can come from the planter tractor or new AB lines can be created.
This works fine in soybeans since I plant 24-30" rows but harvest 14-30" rows with a 35' head. If I am on outside path of the planter, I have some excess on each end of the head. This excess is adequate to take 14 rows even when I'm taking parts of two passes which is most of the time. This works well for soybeans. The system steers well enough that the combine takes 14 rows. It would be fine in drilled soybeans.
I tried the system with corn. I plant 24-30" rows but harvest 8. This would seem like a better match since I could harvest the left, center or right set of 8 rows and not have to be concerned about the planter edge. This did work but I found I was not happy with the arrangement since the corn head was not perfectly aligned with the corn rows even though I have a rather high end GPS. The problem is planter drift. I felt that I could manually steer eyeballing the rows better than the AB line arrangement.
I purchased a Truesight II feeler system from the Headsight folks and installed it two years ago. It has its own controller which steers the combine by using a feeler between rows 2 & 3. It is able to use the Steady Steer motor to turn the steering wheel.
This means that when I switch from harvesting soybeans to corn, I need to move the motor cable from the Steady Steer controller to the Truesight Controller. I also move my engage button cable from one to the other also. Both systems work very well.
My feeler system cost some $6000 which did not include the Steady Steer motor since it came with the other kit. I am happy with both arrangements.
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Corn combine auto steer with whiskers?
