Hi,

Really interested in how the Agras is working for people. Does anyone have it working on a regular basis yet? What are your thoughts so far?

Cheers
Moose

any input yet?

Hi
Just joined the forum, hope you still interested receiving a reply to your post.
I bought an Agras late last year. Some issues I found are first the little information in general for highly concentrated spraying as the tank only 10 lts. most clients are afraid it won't be efficient for delivering a good quantity of product on the crops.  So you have to spend a lot of time researching, testing and then proving your clients that the drone is effective and that is a better (and cheaper) alternative than their actual methods. DJI put a lot of emphasis on the flying operation of the drone, not on its effectiveness from the farmer's point of view, so you are on your own testing and testing with nozzles and hydro sensitive paper number and droplet sizes. Another issue is that big farms already have in place modern high volume spraying systems, so the Agras is only good for middle or small size farms.  Last but not the least is that Agras works well only for some type of crops, I tried fruit trees (7 ft.) and you have to fly the drone in manual mode, not a good idea with low visibility and the ground radar making a very uneven flight, also grapes that have a lot of crossing wires are not recommended. My advice, look for rice, cotton, wheat, sugar, soja that are low and dense crops. And last, the battery endurance. Hope this will help you. Best regards.

Hey, thanks for the info.

I'm intending to use the Agras for spraying weeds such as gorse and broom in steep inaccessible terrain. It will be spraying small areas no larger than 1 to 2 hectares and will probably be flown in full manual mode.

I'm interested to hear about any information regarding minimum flow rates of RoundUp and/or Tordon. How concentrated can those chemicals be sprayed at with the super fine nozzles that the Agras will be using?
Kind regards

sneakyMoose Posted at 2018-4-27 13:45
Hey, thanks for the info.

I'm intending to use the Agras for spraying weeds such as gorse and broom in steep inaccessible terrain. It will be spraying small areas no larger than 1 to 2 hectares and will probably be flown in full manual mode.

Hi there.  I'm not an expert in weeds, but this may help:
The Roundup bottle is 1.33 gallons or 5.32 liters so you will need two bottles to fill the Agras 10 liter tank. According to the product technical sheet, you will need 1 gallon to cover 300 sq.foot. (about. 0028 hectares or 3x9 meters), a very small area but consider this is calculated for walking the field. There is no formula here for aerial spraying, so you will need to test.

If each nozzle delivers 0.43 lts./min, for consuming one tank you will need to spray at low speed at least for 6 minutes.
If you fly at 6 km/h (or 1.66 mt/s) -low speed, you may cover half a hectare in 12-15 minutes (spraying + maneuvering).

So for testing, I may consider first using 8 bottles of 1.33 gallons each, per hectare. Making four flights of 6-10 minutes:

Flight #1: 10 lts. (2. 5 gallons) -2 bottles / 6 to 8 minutes covering 1/4 hectare
Flight #2: 10 lts. (2. 5 gallons) -2 bottles / 6 to 8 minutes covering 1/4 hectare + Battery change
Flight #3: 10 lts. (2. 5 gallons) -2 bottles / 6 to 8 minutes covering 1/4 hectare
Flight #4: 10 lts. (2. 5 gallons) -2 bottles / 6 to 8 minutes covering 1/4 hectare

The XR11001 nozzle it's not ideal, but it will work ok.

Be very careful, flying manual is very tricky and dangerous look for an elevated position to operate the aircraft and get an observer to help you with obstacles and distances.

Good luck and keep me posted.