so we've been doing manual spraying on about 60 acres of grapes for the last several years and honestly the labor cost is just getting ridiculous, not to mention inconsistent coverage in the tighter rows. my neighbor two farms over picked up an Agras T40 last fall and swears by it but he's running flat terrain on row crops which is pretty different from what we deal with.

our vineyard has some decent elevation changes and the rows are trellised so the canopy geometry is kind of complex, wondering if anyone has actually run an Agras or something comparable on sloped vineyards specifically. the T40's terrain following is supposed to handle up to like 30 degree slopes but i haven't seen anyone actually talk about how well it performs in practice on something like that. also not sure if the breakaway arm design handles vine trellis overhang situations or if you basically need to fly manual on those sections anyway.

budget isn't unlimited but we're not trying to cheap out either - this would be a real operational tool not a toy. anyone running ag drones on wine grapes or similar crops with complex canopy structure?

ran an Agras T20P on terraced olive groves in spain for two seasons before upgrading, the terrain following is genuinely good but it does get confused on steep elevation transitions if your field boundary mapping wasn't done carefully. the RTK matters a lot here - if you're relying on just standard GPS the altitude hold gets sloppy on grades above maybe 20 degrees, at least in my experience. for vineyards specifically i'd say the spray planning software is more of a limitation than the aircraft itself, getting the swath width and flow rate dialed for trellised canopy takes real trial and error, you basically need to fly a few test passes at different heights and log your coverage with water sensitive paper before you commit to a real spray job.

the T40 is a bigger machine obviously and the dual atomizer setup should help with canopy penetration but i havent used one personally on grapes. worth calling DJI's ag support line directly, they actually have agronomists on staff now which surprised me.

we looked at agras last year and ended up going with a XAG P100 instead mostly because of the after-sale support situation in our region, parts availability for DJI ag stuff can be rough depending where you are. just something to factor in before you commit. the P100 has been solid for us on corn but i cant really speak to vineyards