THE opportunity to see the first 24-metre Morris Quantum airseeder bar in Australia, plus tillage and other agricultural machinery being demonstrated, attracted farmers from across the Central Wheatbelt to Merredin recently.
The McIntosh & Son, Merredin branch hosted a Ride 'N' Drive Day to showcase some of the broad range of machinery and equipment it sells with static displays and demonstrations of some of the newest models.
The day also served to acquaint farmers with the future location of the McIntosh & Son, Merredin branch, on the corner of Mitchell Street and Adamson Road at the eastern entrance to the town, just off Great Eastern Highway.
Branch manager Rob Pauley confirmed the branch would be moving its complete operation along Mitchell Street to the new site, with preparations already completed ready for construction of a new sales office, spare parts and service centre complex at the front of the site.
"It will be a similar set up to what we (McIntosh & Son) have at Wongan Hills," Mr Pauley said.
"We have a big area here so the paddock out the back will be used to test machines before they are delivered, for setting up guidance systems et cetera and, if required, to demonstrate machines for customers."
Mr Pauley said while McIntosh & Son would be at all the machinery field days on the horizon, its Ride 'N' Drive Day gave people an opportunity to see how machines performed "in the paddock".
"The attendance today has certainly been encouraging and made all of the effort organising the day and putting it on worthwhile," he said.
Apart from McIntosh & Son product specialist staff and staff from other branches on hand to answer questions, the day was also attended by representatives from New Holland and Waringa Distribution.
A Gessner HDR-6011 Series II deep ripper and a 12 metre Gregoire Besson speed tiller with 510 millimetre discs and a range of packer options, imported by Waringa, were demonstrated at intervals throughout the day.
Those attending could also ride in a Miller Nitro 7380 self-propelled sprayer, New Holland and Merlo telehandlers and a big LuiGong 856H wheel loader.
Static displays included New Holland tractors, from the little Boomer 25C with front end loader and mower attachments, up through the range to a 12.9 litre, 447kW T9.670 tractor on tracks and New Holland Revelation CR9.90 combine harvesters with a variety of fronts, including a MacDon FD250 flexdraper and MidWest Durus Premium 60 (18.2 metres).
A range of LuiGong wheel loaders, Merlo and New Holland telehandlers, New Holland hay equipment and a selection of McIntosh & Son's used equipment was also displayed.
Waringa Distribution displayed its big Elmer's Haulmaster 41-tonne chaser bin, Agri-Spread AS2120 SCS spreader and Highline rock picker.
Mike Christey, Waringa, said the big tandem axle chaser bin attracted attention.
"The high capacity unload (18 tonnes per minute) is the big thing - it's a bit of a crime to have a header stop in the middle of a paddock waiting for the chaser bin to get back, so that fast unloading is a very important feature," Mr Christey said.
Undoubtedly one of the star attractions was the 24m Morris Quantum airseeder bar and a Morris 9445 section control air cart with 27,800 litre granular tank and 7000lt liquid tank.
Morris' biggest seeding bar - the first in Australia - was already sold and staying in the Merredin area, along with a new accompanying tow-behind air cart, said McIntosh & Son Distribution's Morris specialist Eliot Jones.
He said it would be displayed at the Mingenew, Dowerin and Newdegate machinery field days for those who missed it at Merredin.
The 24m bar "continuing on the Quantum tradition, has fantastic flotation and really good frame strength with the interlocking frames", he pointed out.
"We've been able to get this 24m bar down to a really narrow transport width of about 7.6m, which is actually under the width of some of the 18 metre bars out there in the market and avoids a lot of potential transport problems," Mr Jones said.
He said the 24m bar was also fitted with Morris' Auto-Pack option which "has been one of the ground-breaking things in the tillage industry in the last couple of years".
"Instead of having your hydraulics as being the master in the tractor controlling packing pressure, we've turned that on its head," Mr Jones said.
"You actually dial in the packing pressure you want on your press wheel and then the hydraulic pressure automatically changes to maintain that pressure.
"That results in a great finish to your furrow and great seed-soil contact and excellent germination has been one of the feedbacks from day one."
Another product to attract plenty of attention was a SwarmFarm Robotics SwarmBot 5.5 autonomous tractor pulling a 2000lt Goldacres boomsprayer fitted with Goldacres' 'green-on-brown' and 'green-on-green' Weedetect spot spraying system, doing laps of the paddock.
SwarmFarm's Sam Finlayson said the unit displayed was from Brad Jones' Tammin farm and there were two other units on farms at Esperance and a fourth unit on a farm at nearby Beaumont.
A fifth SwarmBot was on its way to WA, bound for a farm at Mullewa.
"We have 57 of them operating around Australia, mainly (doing) broadacre spraying," Mr Finlayson said.
"We range from 9m out to 24m (boom width with four brands of tow-behind sprayers) and up to 3000lt capacity payload, although it is sometimes 2000lt tow behind and a 1000lt tank on the back of the SwarmBot to improve traction.
"We also do turf mowing and slashing - a couple of macadamia farms at Bundaberg are using SwarmBots."
Mr Finlayson said the SwarmBot was fitted with a GPS head unit which could be removed and placed in a utility and driven around the perimeter of a paddock, along an "A-B line" from one boundary to another and around any obstacles in the paddock to "map it" for the SwarmBot.
"It's a simple, but very important process," he said.
"We have a (computer) program that will do the rest for you."
He said the StormBot was powered by a four-cylinder diesel motor with a 210lt fuel tank, had an articulated chassis and a drive motor on each wheel which enabled speeds of up to 10km/h across a variety of terrain.
It used LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology to avoid obstacles in front of it and a weather station on the machine continually assessed conditions for spraying and automatically shut the unit down once wind speeds high enough to affect accurate spot spraying were detected.
The SwarmBot and sprayer are controlled by a mobile phone app and Mr Finlayson said, in answer to the most commonly-asked question on the day, if the SwarmBot stopped for any reason in the middle of a paddock, the sprayer shut down and the operator was sent a mobile phone alert.
