Agrifac has established two new world spraying records with its Condor self-propelled sprayer at a farm in Western Australia. The successful attempt took place at the farm of Karolyn, Tony and Brendan Mason, where Agrifac’s 48m HTA Condor Endurance demonstration machine completed 2,638ha of non-stop spraying during 24 hours. That’s an average of around 110ha per hour, and during one hour the machine achieved a second world record by covering 150.7ha.
The Mason’s operate a 51m Condor Endurance, and their farm lies at the edge of the Midwest region with nothing but bush and salt lakes beyond them. There was little preparation leading up to the event. The demonstration machine was close by a week before and after a few phone calls, it was all set. The target was to beat the previous record of 1,032ha established by an Amazone UX11200 trailed sprayer in 2014. Condor operator Mark Slater said they wanted to make it as real as possible. “Not all the fields were smooth going or of a regular shape,” he said, and Mark reckons to have come across a bit of everything including trees, tight corners, gradual slopes and a few bumps. In total, there were 15 fields with a 10-minute drive between the two blocks. Mark admits the output could have been even higher had he not driven into the wrong field in the middle of the night!
Initially the plan was for an application rate of 19.68lit/ha but it was decided to drop back to 15.52lit/ha and the Condor’s 8,000-litre tank was filled 13 times and sprayed a total of 105,518 litres. Stoppage time per fill averaged 11 minutes, and the average spraying speed was almost 25km/hr. The record was adjudicated by a local justice of the peace.
