Sweet - amazing machine! A few ideas: maybe a bracket/tray to hold the copper grease; a bit more under clearance on the 'rake'; an ultra-slow crawl mode (- just spill most of the hydraulics)? Clever use of the electric post hole borer for securing pins.
How do you control where it transitions from heading to China to coming back up to the surface? What kind of soil will stop it? EG, how big of a lone rock in relatively good soil does it take to make this a video of a nightmare vs. an easy day?
The bit on the front of the drill head has roughly a 22 degree angle on it. Steering and drill directions go off of a clock from where the operator sits. If you want to steer right, you push rods into the ground @ 3 o clock, 12 o clock if you want drill head to go up, etc. If you are good with the current direction of drill head, you simply keep drilling and spinning the rods. The guy walking above is able to locate the drill head, know the direction of drill head if operator were to push rods (3, 6, 9, and 12 o clock), and can also tell operator the pitch of drill head. He then communicates with the operator on if they need to drill or to push rods in certain direction to reach end point. In this video, these guys were dealing with easy ground. Any cobble/rocky type conditions will rattle the hell out of these drills. Boulders would stop this drill in an instant but they do have bigger directional drill that are able to go through rougher terrains with different drill heads as well. Hopes this helps
