Spreading Cover Crop with an Air Tractor 502

[Music] hi guys I'm Tyson with aviation adventures and appreciate you tuning it today we are working on a little bit of cover crop so we're gonna give you a bird's-eye view here of what's going on obviously on the ground at the moment and we are just loading the airplane I just fueled up and pull it forward here for this truck so that it can pull up and both the hopper with seat so we actually have a wheat radish and rye I believe is the mix that we're doing so the truck just pulls in you can see that it has a big auger on it I've got Kali on the wing and mix is actually in the back of the truck that big hopper that's back there that's where everything is it comes up this tube there's actually an auger in there and it gets dispensed right here no Callie's off the wing and she opens the hopper for me I think you can see it just going in and if I get down here you can see it starting to fill the hopper there and like I said Callie's on the wing because this airplane you have to manually open up the lid that's right there but some airplanes that do this a lot we don't really do much of it maybe you know a couple times a year but if you do a ton of it you can actually have an automatic opener on the lid so all I would do is hit a button and that lid would open up and then I actually have an auger inside of the hopper here and it would sit there and spin and dispense all of the material throughout the hopper so that it can get full so now that that's done the trucks gonna back away Callie's going to go ahead and close my hopper up we're gonna take off and we'll see you the air alright we are at the field now this particular field was about 33 miles from the airstrip that I took off from and that's kind of far 90% of the fields are usually probably within 15 miles maybe 20 but even 20 could be stretching it from our hope location and this one took about Oh 12 13 minutes to get to so still not a terrible amount of time in the air they may notice that I am a little bit higher in the air than when I'm spraying so when I'm spraying I'm about oh five to ten feet at the air and with your spreading cover crop I've over powerline height and over trees and so I'm more like 55 up fifty feet the air I kind of like it because I'm not worried about hitting power lines which is that's nice so you may ask yourself well why are you doing this what's the what's the deal with cover crop the reason that I'm doing this well it can have kind of a multitude of reasons but there are a handful of reasons why people do it and I'm spreading this into standing corn meaning that the court has not been harvested yet it'll it's going to be harvested here in a couple butts of the fall so why well it can prevent soil erosion basically help to control that as well as improve soil but biological properties and it can supply nutrients for the next crop that you're going to be planting as well as suppress weeds and that one is because if the soil is just completely bare it has a chance for weeds to overtake the entire thing but if there's cover crop there then that cover crop is also fighting with the weeds for control of the soil so it basically helps to suppress the weeds that they want to grow in that ferret soil and it could also break test cycles s will actually you know if you're like oh I'm planting soybeans in a planted coordinate of planting soybeans and then planted corn you can always kind of have a problem with pests that come and go between these crops but if you throw something in there like a cover crop that can help to break that cycle so that you're getting rid of those pests and then another thing that it does is if you have livestock you can actually let the livestock forage in the cover crop do I guess dependent of what cover crop you're spreading but you can let cattle graze on it and use it for food so you come in here you harvest the corn and by the time you harvest it you already have the cover crop coming up and at that point you could let your cattle come in at their be booth air form so it does kind of have a ball titude of reasons I think soil control is a really big one as well as the nutrients for the soil and if you you may hear this I imagine you do that buzzing sound in the background that's my stall warning horn going off on the airplane if you're ever wondering exactly what that is I think you saw the spreader it's tough and I apologize because we had a really cool shot we had a GoPro set up on the spreader so you could kind of really see the action because I know right now you can't see anything it's a very light amount that's coming out up I'm currently putting out 14 and a half pounds per acre and so I know that you can't see anything but we were gonna have this awesome shot outside the airplane however on the way to the field the GoPro decided to depart the airplane and take flight on its own so it's somewhere between here and 33 miles that way our tape and phone number is on it as long as it even as well as an email address so if you got find it feel free to return it it's a Minnesota sub we're now with the cover crop this is a little bit lighter of a load so in the hopper I only have about 2,000 pounds if I'm sprayed and I have a full hopper I have about 4,000 pounds in the hopper and the reason for only having two thousand pounds is because I can't physically fit any more seed into the hopper it's full I'm not full on weight but I'm full on volume also if you're like wow 2,000 pounds how much is that well sedan like beer four-door sedan is probably less than 3,000 pounds probably around 2800 maybe 2500 so having a full hopper of liquid is I mean it's like freaking putting a car on the front of the airplane that's a lot of weight that's out there but this thing flies great right now only 2,000 pounds are there and every passed a little bits coming off so if you guys have any questions about cover crop or anything in particular like always you know leave them in the comments section below we'll get back to you and if you like the video please give it a thumbs up and also be sure to subscribe to the channel because we would appreciate that as always philo and fly fast although right now I'm not flying solo as I'm 50 feet the air I'm still trying to fly fast

Channel: Ag Aviation Adventures

Views: 114,594

Keywords: #agaviationadventures, #cropdusting, #agaviation, ag aviation adventures, cover crop, ag aviation, ag aviation cover crop, why spread cover crop, what is cover crop, ag pilot tasks, ag pilot, what do ag pilots do, crop dusting, aerial application, air tractor, spraying, spreading cover crop with AT502, spreading into corn

Id: zPcSXWZdddQ

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 16 2019