so ive been running a small operation on about 340 acres of mixed vineyard and orchard and we've been doing ground-based spraying forever. the labor costs are killing us this season and our agronomist keeps pushing me toward spraying drones. looked at the Agras T40 and honestly the spec sheet looks insane but i have no idea if any of that translates to real world use on uneven terrain like ours.

biggest thing im worried about is the terrain following on slopes. our vineyard rows run up and down some pretty gnarly hillsides, nothing vertical but definitely not flat. the radar altimetry on the T40 is supposed to handle it but ive heard mixed things from guys in other grape-growing regions. also the tank capacity vs what you actually get done in a day with battery swaps seems like it could be a real bottleneck compared to what the brochure implies.

anyone actually running one of these on non-flat ag land? curious what your actual spray rate looks like per day and whether you needed a second operator just to manage batteries and mixing.

we run a T30 on citrus in central valley and terrain following is honestly better than i expected but you need to set your surface reference points carefully before the mission -- if you rush that part you get inconsistent altitude and your droplet size goes all over the place. on flat to moderate slope its basically hands off. steeper stuff i still get a little nervous tbh. the battery situation is real though, two operators minimum if you want to actually hit the efficiency numbers DJI puts in their literature, one person managing the aircraft and one doing battery hot swaps and tank refills or you're sitting around waiting more than you're flying.

not on vineyards but i did a demo day with the T40 last spring on a grain operation in kansas and the thing that impressed me wasnt even the spraying it was the multispectral mapping integration for planning variable rate passes. like you fly a mapping mission first get your NDVI data and then the spray mission automatically adjusts rate based on crop stress zones. dont know if thats useful for grapes specifically but for anyone doing large row crops it changes how you think about the whole workflow. cost is still brutal though, hard to justify unless youre above a certain acreage or doing custom application work for other farms too.