Drones are used on farms all around the world but before they can be used in the UK they need to be fully calibrated to national standards. Here the XAG V40 goes through the calibration process.
On a typical English summers day, we took XAG’s latest, V40 twin rotor drone, down to SCS, the Spreader and Sprayer experts for calibration testing.
In the UK, it’s recommended that every sprayer and spreader machine is tested annually for consistent application.
And it was just a lucky bonus, we were also able to test the V40’s IP67 water resistance rating at the same time! English weather eh!
Before we headed out to the field, we calibrated the drones twin auger feeding system using each of the spreading media due to be tested.
In this case it was 2 commonly used agricultural fertilisers, C-A-N and Nitram.
Most of the pellets ranged in size from 2 to 4 mm but I did notice some large clumps around 30mm in the hopper. However, these passed through the augers without a hitch.
Then it was time to get spreading, so we filled up the drone with media, and set up the line of 500mm square collection boxes, marking the central point.
Each of the collection boxes has an internal grid baffle that is designed to minimise the number pellets bouncing out of the trays as they land.
Once the boxes were all set, I programmed a simple flight path over the central box, pressed the start button and the done went to work.
The V40 is fully autonomous, so it takes off and flies the route automatically, turning on the feeding augers when it enters the defined work area.
And when it’s done, it returns to it’s take off point seamlessly.
As soon as the drone had completed it’s flight, Jake and Russ, our calibration experts got busy collecting the results.
We were looking to achieve as even a spread as possible from the twin spreading disks, to ensure that each plant gets the same amount of fertiliser.
Our first couple of flights gave very promising results but there was a noticeable kick in the distribution pattern at either edge.
But with years of experience behind them, Jake and Russ were able to suggest some changes to flight height and spreading settings, so we made a few tweaks and tried again.
After a few more runs and little more finessing, we gradually dialled in the results until we had an even spread pattern that everyone was happy with.
With expert advice from the team at SCS and reliable repeatability of the V40 it was great to come away from a busy day with a NSTS Spreader Certificate proudly displayed on the drones nose cone.
Now the V40 is ready to be put to some hard work on the farm.
4 июн 2022
