TECHNICAL: The DJI Agras T50 is currently the largest spraying and spreading drone available. We watched the T50 take to the sky in Germany.
The new Agras T50 drone from Chinese manufacturer DJI takes off with a sonorous hum plus a cargo of clover seed on board that it was going to
spread on waterlogged grassland. But it is not just seed that the T50 can spread; it can also handle 0.5 to 5mm diameter granules when in its broadcasting mode. The spreading set-up is pretty simple: A dosing aperture and an electrically driven spreading disc are attached to the drone’s little hopper. Depending on what you are applying and how high you are flying, this can spread up to 10m wide. For our particular job, contractor Jan
Schmidt opted for a width of 6.0m. The 75-litre hopper is an option to replace the 40-litre solution tank. When swapping, the hopper/tank is simply lowered into the frame and fixed in place with quick-locks.
Integrated weighing
The T50 can carry a maximum of 50kg of material. This brings the total take-off weight to 103kg including the battery. Load cells allow the pilot to check the weight of material in the hopper as it is being filled. The three load cells are now mounted on the frame of the drone — the older and smaller Agras T30, had four on the spreader hopper. This had certain disadvantages because it meant that the amount of liquid in the spray tank could
not be weighed. In Jan Schmidt’s experience, the new three-point approach also produces more accurate measurements.
Using the remote control, the pilot sets the application rate, working width, flying speed and rpm of the spreading disc. Annoyingly DJI doesn’t provide a spreading chart, so the pilot has to use a little nouse.
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