ive already swapped out the nozzles because that was the obvious first step, checked the diaphragm pump, reseated all the connectors i could get to. still seeing it. and the weird thing is it doesnt happen on every flight, its maybe 60% of the time which makes me think its not a straight up hardware failure but maybe something environmental or a settings thing im missing.

the agras assistant software shows everything nominal during preflight which is part of why its so frustrating. anyone had something similar where the logs look fine but the field tells a different story

been looking at the DJI Matrice 30T and also the Autel EVO Max 4T just to compare options. main thing im trying to figure out is whether i can still cover enough acreage in a day to make the economics work if im switching to a multirotor that needs more battery swaps. my fixed wing can do like 400+ acres on a single charge depending on wind. obviously no multirotor is touching that but im wondering if the trade off makes sense for the type of work im describing.

anyone running both types for ag work? or did you just fully commit to one or the other

ive read all the usual stuff about NDVI being better at catching stress before it's visible but honestly when i talk to the agronomist we work with she says most of the time by the time the drone data is processed and in front of someone who can act on it the window for a useful intervention has already closed anyway. so im wondering if the workflow problem is bigger than the sensor problem.

anyone actually running multispectral on smaller acreage and finding it worth the cost and processing overhead? the Altum is not cheap and adding pix4dfields or agisoft on top of that is another chunk every year.

my flow rate is set to auto and im flying at 5m/s with 3.5m boom width overlap set to 15%. field sizes are usually 40-120 acres. ive gone back and checked the logs and the boom pressure looks consistent but the strips are still showing up when i do thermal imaging passes a few days after to check uptake.

wondering if anyone else has seen this and whether it's a mission planning issue or if theres something i should be looking at on the nozzle side. ive replaced the diaphragm pump once already but that was for a different reason.

had one guy last fall who had this really obvious stressed area in his corn that showed up clear as day in the NDVI ? turned out to be a compaction issue from where an old fence line was. we caught it early enough that he could have done a variable rate nitrogen application to compensate a little. he didnt. just said 'yeah thats always been a problem spot' and moved on. so like, what are we actually providing here beyond confirmation of stuff they already knew.

im not being cynical i genuinely want to know if other people doing ag mapping work are seeing real on-farm decisions being made from the data or if its more of a 'nice to have' service that growers pay for but dont fully integrate. because if its the latter i need to think about how im presenting the analysis differently

anyway been looking at some of the XAG P100 stuff and also some of the lesser known chinese brands that are starting to show up through US distributors. curious if anyone has actually run one of these alternatives through a real season doing like corn fungicide apps or something similar. not just test flights, actual work. the flow rate specs look okay on paper but ive been burned before by specs that dont hold up when youre trying to get 80 acres done before the wind picks up.

also wondering about the radar avoidance on the cheaper units because terrain following is not optional for me, a lot of the fields i fly have drainage ditches and elevation changes and i am not interested in burying a $15k drone in a soybean field

had one grower last fall who had a pretty obvious stressed zone show up in the northwest corner of his field three weeks before harvest. we flagged it, talked through possible causes ? could've been compaction, could've been drainage, whatever ? and then he just harvested it the same way as everything else. like okay. so what are we actually doing here

curious if others doing this kind of work have found ways to make the data actually actionable or if precision ag is still kind of ahead of where most farmers realistically are in terms of being able to respond to variable rate recommendations and stuff like that. genuinely not sure if this is a tech problem or an adoption problem or both

been looking at some of the XAG stuff and also some of the lesser known Chinese platforms that are showing up on alibaba. curious if anyone has actually made that jump and what the real world experience is like. not talking about specs on paper, i mean like, does the spray pattern hold up over a full season, how is the pump actually reliability, that kind of thing. the T40 pump has been rock solid for me so thats my benchmark basically.

also not sure how the regulatory side works if im switching platforms mid-season for commercial work, assuming my existing waivers would still cover it as long as the MTOW stays within limits but havent confirmed that yet

already checked the obvious stuff ? filters are clean, nozzles are clear, tank isnt airlocked as far as i can tell. battery voltage is solid. the weird thing is it doesnt throw any fault codes in the XAG app which makes it harder to diagnose. only thing i havent done is pulled the pump assembly itself which i'm a bit hesitant to do mid season because if i mess something up i'm down for god knows how long.

temp out here has been around 32-35 celsius during operations which i know is on the high side but shouldnt be outside operating range. running a fungicide mix, nothing particularly aggressive. any ideas before i call the dealer

currently eyeing the DJI Mavic 3 Multispectral just because its relatively plug and play compared to setting up a full Matrice situation, and the NDVI output from what ive seen looks decent enough for catching stress early. my main use case would be identifying problem areas before they spread, we had a gray leaf spot issue last year that cost us probably 15% yield in one field because we just didnt catch it until it was way too late.

anyone running a setup like this on a smaller acreage? is the multispectral actually usable for disease detection or is it more of a soil moisture / stress indicator type thing? and do you need to be doing this every week to get real value or is like twice a season enough to justify it

ive pulled the nozzles and cleaned them, replaced two that looked worn, made sure the inline filters are clear. still happening. its worse on hot days which makes me wonder if theres some kind of settling or concentration thing going on in the tank but i cant figure out what im doing differently

running the flat fan XR nozzles that came stock, not sure if switching tip type would help or if this is a mixing issue i cant diagnose. support has been kinda useless so far

been looking seriously at a Mavic 3 Multispectral for the NDVI work and maybe a DJI Agras T40 or T25 for spraying down the road, but im not sure if the multispectral data is actually actionable without a bunch of GIS background i dont have. like do you actually need to be running Pix4Dfields or something similar to make sense of the outputs or is there a more approachable workflow for someone whos not a data scientist

also curious if anyone has actually seen ROI on the monitoring side specifically, not just the spraying. the spraying ROI case seems pretty obvious but justified the monitoring investment is harder for me to quantify

using hollow cone nozzles, mixing rates are exactly per label, running through the tank filter every time. asked my chemical rep and he basically shrugged. im wondering if its the water source, we pull from a surface pond and even though we filter im thinking maybe particulate is still getting through. or maybe the nozzle orifice size is wrong for this viscosity.

anyone dealt with persistent clogging on the T10 or any of the Agras line really? is there a finer inline filter people are adding? i know some guys add a second stage filter at the tank inlet but not sure what spec to look for.

been looking hard at switching to something like the DJI Mavic 3 Multispectral or even the Agras T40 if we're going full commitment. the T40 obviously does spraying too which is the other thing we've been wanting to add. neighbor two farms over has been running one for a season and says his input costs dropped noticeably but i havent seen his actual numbers.

main concern is battery life obviously. fixed wing does 45-50 min easy, multirotors are what, 25-30 min tops under a real payload? for 800 acres that starts to feel like a lot of battery swaps. anyone running a hybrid setup or just fully committed to multirotor for everything?

part of the problem is the flight planning ? to get good multispectral data i need consistent lighting conditions and my schedule is at the mercy of cloud cover and client availability and half the time by the time i fly the stress is visible anyway. a guy i know just uses a Phantom 4 Pro with RGB and does very frequent flights like every 5-6 days and swears his change detection workflow catches problems just as early.

is the multispectral actually earning its keep here or is flight frequency and consistency just more important than sensor type

the main thing im worried about is the terrain following on uneven ground ? we have some rolling sections that the T40 handles really well with the radar and lidar combo and i genuinely dont know if the cheaper options have figured that out yet. also the nozzle atomization matters a lot for the fungicide applications we do, getting droplet size wrong is basically throwing money in the dirt.

anyone actually made this switch or run them side by side? not looking for a sales pitch, just want to know if the field performance holds up.

running it in mission mode through the DJI Agras app, field boundaries are set correctly, its not a mapping issue. the drone just seems to keep spraying a beat too long before it lifts and transitions. the overlap isnt catastrophic but on herbicide passes its something i actually care about, especially near field edges where theres sensitive stuff nearby.

anyone figured out the timing compensation settings on these or is this just a known limitation of the platform at this price point

im more interested in just the monitoring side first ? like using something with a decent multispectral camera to actually see NDVI and figure out where the stress is before it gets out of hand. been looking at the Mavic 3 Multispectral but also heard people using regular RGB drones with some processing software and getting decent results for certain things.

question is really whether this makes sense at my scale. 340 acres isnt huge but its not tiny either. anyone here actually doing this on a similar sized operation or is this more of a large-scale farm thing where the ROI actually pencils out

already checked the nozzles, swapped two of them out thinking maybe partial blockage, cleaned the filters, still doing it. firmware is current. we're running a pretty standard diluted herbicide mix so its not like were running anything thick or weird through it. the inconsistency is the part that really bugs me because at least if it failed completely id know what to fix

logging the flow data in the DJI Agras app and you can see the dips pretty clearly so its not just me imagining it. anyone seen this before or have a direction to point me

were talking roughly 800 acres split across 4 fields, not all contiguous. the main thing id want is NDVI mapping to catch stress early before it shows up visually and maybe identify drainage issues we keep having in the northwest corner of the big field. secondary interest is variable rate spraying but thats more of a future thing.

question is ? does anyone actually use this workflow day to day or is it more of a novelty that looks good on paper. also curious what the learning curve looks like if youre not already deep into the drone stuff, im not a complete beginner but im not flying regularly either

im starting to wonder if the disconnect is on my end ? like maybe im not presenting the data in a way that connects to actual decisions ? or if precision farming just hasnt really hit that tipping point yet where the agronomists and growers are set up to act on variable rate prescriptions. curious what others are seeing. are any of you generating VR prescriptions from drone NDVI and getting them actually loaded into a spreader or sprayer controller? or is it mostly still a scouting aid.

my main concern is the radar terrain following. the T40s terrain following is genuinely good and i dont want to go back to flying manual transects over uneven fields, that was a nightmare. so if anyone has actually switched away from the Agras line and run something else for a full season id love to hear how it actually went, not just first impressions.

we were spraying a contact herbicide last week and the application rate was coming out about 15-20% higher than the target according to our post-spray checks and i cannot figure out if its a nozzle thing, a pump calibration thing, or if the onboard RTK is causing the speed variations that are throwing off the rate controller

the dealer just keeps telling us to redo the calibration wizard which we've done like four times now. were running the standard flat fan nozzles it came with, havent swapped to anything else yet. field conditions were pretty calm, wind maybe 3-4 mph so thats not it

anyone with T40 experience have thoughts? like at what point do you just start swapping nozzle types and testing

the thing is we had some late season nitrogen stress last year that didnt show up clearly until it was pretty much too late to do anything about it and i keep thinking a multirotor with a better sensor payload and the ability to actually slow down over suspect areas might have caught it earlier

anyone running both? like do you keep the fixed wing for the big weekly passes and then use something like a matrice or even a mavic with a multispectral for followup? or did you just ditch the fixed wing entirely once you went multi

also curious what software people are using for the NDVI processing side of things, im on Pix4Dfields right now but its getting expensive and ive been eyeing Agrisoft or just running stuff through QGIS manually

ambient temps have been around 15-20 celsius so its not a cold weather thing. tank is being loaded to around 30L which is below the max. the only thing im wondering about is whether our nozzle configuration is affecting it somehow ? we're running the standard flat fan setup that came with it. also the batteries are relatively new, only have maybe 40 cycles on them.

anyone tuned their operation to get better real-world flight times or is this just the reality of running a heavy lift sprayer and i need to adjust my expectations