News Release
The Iowa Section of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers has named its 2010 award winners. The awards were presented April 1 during the Section’s 2010 Spring Meeting, held at the Kinze Product Center in Williamsburg, Iowa.
Each year ASABE’s Iowa Section recognizes members that have made significant contributions to society and the profession. The three awards given are Newcomer Engineer of the Year, Young Engineer of the Year, and Engineer of the Year.
Jacob M. Bolson - Newcomer Engineer of the Year
Jacob M. Bolson is an application engineer for Hagie Manufacturing in Clarion, Iowa. An ASABE member since 2003, he was honored for his service to ASABE at both the national and section levels. Bolson has demonstrated his service to ASABE through participation and leadership on several national ASABE committees. He is currently the chair of the 2010 Agricultural Machinery Conference, taking place May 2-5, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Bolson has been actively involved in supporting preprofessional ASABE members by freely giving his time to advise and mentor capstone design students through the Iowa State Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Department. Through his industry contacts, Bolson has facilitated significant equipment donations back to the Iowa State Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering department which have been used to enhance the overall education quality for current students.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
WAAS Satellite to drift off orbit
The Federal Aviation Administration says one of the two Wide Area Augmentation System geosynchronous satellites will drift out of usable orbit within the next few weeks. Intelsat told the FAA earlier that it had lost control of the Galaxy 15 satellite (PRN 135), which hosts the WAAS SBAS transponder.
FAA officials say they are watching the satellite and predict its imminent failure. Once that happens, WAAS will be disrupted for users in northwest Alaska. The rest of the WAAS service area — the U.S., Canada and Mexico — will operate normally, but will be reduced to a single WAAS broadcasting satellite (PRN 138).
FAA officials say they are watching the satellite and predict its imminent failure. Once that happens, WAAS will be disrupted for users in northwest Alaska. The rest of the WAAS service area — the U.S., Canada and Mexico — will operate normally, but will be reduced to a single WAAS broadcasting satellite (PRN 138).
Thursday, February 11, 2010
HTS honored Silver Circle Award from Trimble
At the recent Trimble Annual Reseller's meeting, HTS received the Silver Circle Award for "Outstanding Sales and Invaluable Customer Service" in 2009.
We are seeing a tremendous growth in the Autopilot steering systems, and I wanted to take a minute to break down the technology and its value.
Autosteer in the midwest has been somewhat slow to adapt compared to other areas of the country, and I believe much of this has been because of the value of the crops. We were comparing our $2/bushel corn and $6/bushel beans to the high dollar vegetable crops of the west coast. The ROI just isn't there, or so we thought. The thing is, everyone forgot that we are no longer working with those prices. With $3-$4 corn, and $9-$10 beans, there is a significant return on investment with an autosteer system.
We are also working with bigger machines now. This means that the cost per hour to run the machine has went up, because it is burning more fuel, and the depreciation on the machine adds up quickly with every hour on the tach.
There is also a third leg to this that I haven't mentioned yet. Operator fatigue has become a bigger and bigger deal. This is tough to put a dollar figure on, but there is definitely significant value to getting home at night and not being completely wore out from running the tractor across the field all day long. This comes into play in the years like what we have had recently, with shorter windows of opportunities to get the crops in and out of the field.
What does this all mean? You can easily pay for autosteer technology on your farm. Contact HTS to find out how this can pay back for you.
We are seeing a tremendous growth in the Autopilot steering systems, and I wanted to take a minute to break down the technology and its value.
Autosteer in the midwest has been somewhat slow to adapt compared to other areas of the country, and I believe much of this has been because of the value of the crops. We were comparing our $2/bushel corn and $6/bushel beans to the high dollar vegetable crops of the west coast. The ROI just isn't there, or so we thought. The thing is, everyone forgot that we are no longer working with those prices. With $3-$4 corn, and $9-$10 beans, there is a significant return on investment with an autosteer system.
We are also working with bigger machines now. This means that the cost per hour to run the machine has went up, because it is burning more fuel, and the depreciation on the machine adds up quickly with every hour on the tach.
There is also a third leg to this that I haven't mentioned yet. Operator fatigue has become a bigger and bigger deal. This is tough to put a dollar figure on, but there is definitely significant value to getting home at night and not being completely wore out from running the tractor across the field all day long. This comes into play in the years like what we have had recently, with shorter windows of opportunities to get the crops in and out of the field.
What does this all mean? You can easily pay for autosteer technology on your farm. Contact HTS to find out how this can pay back for you.
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