So I’m playing with the simulator on my pc, I put in all of the measurements for my planter tractor and started going. One thing to note with this is that my tractor and planter is kind of long, in fact it’s longer than it is wide. It’s a 4WD tractor hooked to a 30’’ planter. I noticed with the regular U-turn feature that the implement doesn’t make it to the end rows before it starts to turn, leaving the point rows curved as it crosses the line (first picture).
When you turn around an implement with a long tongue, you typically continue straight until the implement crosses the line then begin to turn toward the next pass. Then as you are approaching the next line, you swing the tractor wide so the implement will be straight and lined up for the next pass. (Second picture)
The current turn U-turn design does the last half perfectly. However I think with one more adjustment anyone could make the entire U-turn perfect from start to finish, no matter what they are pulling. (Or pushing for that matter)
Right now the center of the U-turn circle is set right in between the two guidance lines, which makes a symmetrical hairpin shape. If a guy could adjust the center line of the U-turn circle, left or right, then he could create an offset hairpin shape.
Interesting, because I’ve wanted to try the P-turn, but invert it, for use on our combine. Haven’t gotten around to it(lots of stuff to learn before then!). But it sounds like a bit of a nightmare, getting the algorithm right, so you can adjust the center.
you are correct . long tongued narrow machines need to follow a different light bulb effect than the standard, i will have that type this spring too . would be nice to be able to adjust it…
For me, planter won’t even be the main trouble child. My strip till machine is 15’ wide, but about 24’ long! Thats just the implement, not the tractor! However on that one I’ll be skipping a pass every turn around so the U-turn track will be exactly the same as my planter setup, same tractor too.
But this brings up another potential problem. Lets say someone has a setup like we’re talking about, and the operator doesn’t want to slow down to a crawl to turn the tractor around. So he decides he’ll skip two passes to have plenty of room to whip it around. On AOG it will create a U-turn path that looks like a half square with rounded corners, which is perfect… for self propelled or mounted implements. When you have an implement that is towed behind, you still need to swing wide when lining up with that next path even if you’ve given yourself plenty of room to turn around.
Im not sure how the line generating works on here, but considering the fact you can adjust the radius of the turn I’m assuming it generates a circle to make the turning paths. So maybe someone could give that center of the circle a positive or negative bias. Or on a wide U-turn path it probably uses two separate circles to make the first then second turn path, so maybe one could adjust each one independently.
I really wish I knew anything about coding so I could offer suggestions, but unfortunately I don’t. Haha
I use two headland passes with our 60’ planter and I adjust the U-turn radius higher so that it creates the keyhole (light bulb) turn but I agree, straightening out the path into the turn would be ideal.
@Hman@m_elias on my operation, two planter passes works perfect for all of my different width equipment. I’ve got a 12 row planter, 6 row strip-tiller, 24 row y-drop sidedressing in the sprayer, and 8 row corn head on the combine. If I added one more planter pass on the end rows it would mess up my sidedress and combine pass, and if I added two more planter passes, making it 48 rows, then I wouldn’t have very many stright passes in most of my fields because they are all smaller. So 24 end rows is ideal for my setup.
Yeah, with keyhole u-turn mine also starts the turn slightly before the planter reaches the headland. In much older versions there were more u-turn options but they’ve been removed for some reason.
