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Leesburg, Ohio | I have planted for four years now with auto-steer. The first three were with an EZsteer running WAAS and markers. V V was right when he said it would be fine for a while, and then off by 8 or 10 or 36 inches. Occasionally even off by ten FEET! Still liked it better than manual steering. Curves would not work at all.
Found that it was not possible to use WAAS to follow rows made by WAAS in a strip till or side-dress situation. Even trying to shift or nudge to stay on the row was still impossible to do without taking out a bunch of corn, or getting off the strip for way too long. Manual steering was way easier following strips/rows already made by WAAS.
Last fall we added a Baseline unit (single freq. RTK) to our Outback that we were using to make strips. Then decided last spring to go to a full Deere RTK system. The Baseline was accurate enough making the strips last fall that we could run on them this spring with full RTK by shifting over maybe three or four times in a field, so worked pretty well. We have now moved it to our combine (until we can get one with a Deere valve in it) and have founf that it works OK harvesting beans if we use the Baseline.
The full RTK system was accurate enough that we never used markers to plant with this year, even on the ends and curves.
We replanted one whole 75 acre field last spring using RTK guidance on top of the original planting with RTK. It actually put the seed in the same slot! The planter did drift off an inch or so on the steeper hills, but it was dead-on for the most part.
Bottom-line answer in our experience: WAAS guidance for planting is better than manual, but don't even think of trying it without markers, and don't think that you will be able to use auto-steer on any second pass, or on curves. RTK is probably worth the money if you want to make a second pass, and it is necessary without markers, and will work very well even on curves (at least the Deere GS2 system will).
Our Deere RTK system was a substantial investment, but has given us cost savings on many operations and is far more versatile than the patchwork of WAAS systems we had earlier. | |
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Planting with autosteer question
