I have a new (to me) combine this year, and we have worked through most of the learning curve on the couple hundred acres of small grains (wheat/barley) that we did in the summer, but I also got a new (to me) header for it, and we didn’t get it until the last field of grain. It worked fine once we got the reel speed calibrated so that it speeds up and slows down as the combine does, but because we were cutting off the grain fairly high we didn’t get a chance to try out the auto-header height control.
So when I’m trying to set everything for soybeans, I was trying to get the auto-header height figured out, and I just couldn’t seem to make it do what it should. Now my old combine head didn’t have that function, so I didn’t have any previous experience, but it seemed like everything should work, it just didn’t.
Rookie mistake.. there are plates you bolt on the bottom so that it doesn’t flex and flop around when you are doing grain. The dealership had put them on for me and I didn’t realize they needed to come off so the head would flex for following the ground closely for soybeans. No flex, no movement for the auto-header to detect to tell it to move.
Hopefully, we will watch it work perfectly today!!
So, how did the combine header work during yesterdays trials ? Well, I hope!