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'SAVANNAH BLADE PLOW EXCEEDS ALL OUR EXPECTATIONS' |
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Neil Armstrong and his two sons, Ross and Dean, moved to Central Queensland from southern New South Wales nine years ago and bought the huge, historic but undeveloped Comet Downs property of some 66,000 acres (26,000 hectares). |
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The family decision was made, predominantly, to give them the power to pull a massive blade plow to reclaim their valuable landholding from the brigalow regrowth. Ross confirms that in all on-farm production work such as damsinking, the D10 gives around 30 percent more production than the combined power of the two D8Ks - and more than justifies the higher capital outlay. Experimenting with a smaller, ripper-mounted blade plow, they felt the D10 could well handle a blade plow nearly double the size of most trailing blade plows in use in their area. In conjunction with David Heckendorf of Savannah Equipment they settled on a 7.7 metre width with a 30-degree blade angle, relying on the four-barrel ripper design to give them the required suction and depth control. Ross Armstrong: “The design and performance in the field exceeds all our expectations.” “We are able to get the plow in 10 inches to 12 inches anywhere we like, pull it in second gear (at 4.5 mph) anywhere we want to go - and then average 12 acres an hour and only use 16 gallons of fuel.” By comparison, conventional blade plows working in the same area are achieving only half this production. Since starting in January with the blade plow, the Armstrong's have invested in a FLOSCAN Fuel Flow Meter for the Cat D10 motor. This enables the operator to be even more accurate in his use of hydraulic trim on the rippers, rather than just relying on the tone the engine to get the best economy. The fuel meter, available from Savannah Equipment, uses the same principle as an aircraft engine flow meter and shows an instantaneous reading of the gallons/litres per hour. Using the angle control of the Quad-Ram Ripper, the blade plow penetration angle can be adjusted to the most efficient setting. |
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The Armstrong blade-plowing rig is - without doubt - the most technically advanced blade plow combination available today. Savannah Equipment is proud to be associated with its development. At a rate of 150 acres a day, the Armstrongs intend to plow for brigalow sucker control on their grazing land and to eliminate underground obstacles on their 150,000 acres of prime farm land. A closely knit family, the Armstrongs say they are firm believers in getting maximum output from their limited labour source for such a large property. Their original purchase was a new Versatile 935 - a 335hp 4WD in 1981. Five years ago they bought the first of the new Baldwin 600hp four-wheel-drive “Supertractors” from a Savannah subsidiary, Machinery Market, at Rockhampton. Put together with the largest rig available in Australia, an 80ft Symonds Cultivator, this rig is capable of cultivating 50 acres an hour. More recently, the Armstrongs invested in a Cat 65 Challenger rubber-tracked farm tractor to work alongside the Baldwin and the Cat D 1 ON 'dozer. This substantial investment makes sense when you see a brand new cotton gin built recently by a private firm only a few kilometres away at Yamala on the Capricorn Highway. # * Brigalow is a leguminous tree species (Acacia Harpohylla) native to Australia. It grows throughout the medium rainfall areas of Queensland, often on very good volcanic farming soil. Originally, brigalow was cleared by knocking it down with chains drawn between large bulldozers. But brigalow is capable of vigorous sucker regrowth. The Blade Plow, invented about 20 years ago by Darrel Symonds (now Savannah Forestry Equipment USA Marketing and Operations Manager) is used extensively to kill this regrowth. It's done by cutting through horizontally under the lateral roots and fracturing the soil to aerate and kill the root system. |
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