Well I beat the rain (finished at 11:30 last night, rain started at 3:30am /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif), and must say that it was *much* easier picking up the bales with the bale wagon ... mostly in the dark using a flashlight as a "headlight". Manoevering around the field of bales in the dark pulling the rig felt a bit being in a minefield (with less dire consequences though). I *think* I got them all picked up.
A pic of my QT chute is attached, the design was strongly influenced by the "inventory" pile.
It only missed on 3-4 of 250+ bales and I think those were mostly cases where the bale being dumped on a corner. The engineer in me is already scheming for a trip flap underneath that I would hold the bale longer and could be tripped "early" if a bale was ready and you were approaching the end of a windrow. It could auto trip most of the time which would flip the bale even cleaner. A few of the bales were a bit "scuffed" at one end, which I *think* was caused by them dragging as they fell off. Don't know for sure because I couldn't really watch it in action. If the truth be told, it's probably a classic case of taking a simple, pragmatic, no moving parts, solution and adding extra "features" that raise the complication orders of magnitude while adding questionable benefit to the end user ... but hey ... that's something we engineers do oh so well! But it would be fun. (How about that for a set up?).
I'm seriously going to have a go and adding the "stack" feature to my wagon, as it was the unloading part that took a while. It wasn't helped by our too small elevator, so most of the hay got added to the stack in one bay of the driveshed (which unfortunately isn't *quite* high enough to stack into (perhaps yet anyway /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif)). I'll be looking for pictures to help with the conversion. BTW, I think the newer model wagons had "push off" blocks (is it?) to eliminate the need for the "stack chains". Could someone explain what and how these are/work please. Pictures would be *most* appreciated.
I think this marks the "official" end of the haying season ... 1200 bales "put up" and another 170 on the flat wagon that I might try to sell to get my gas money back. Now to get set for the "steak converters" to "process" it all /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif.
Once more, thanks to everyone for your help.
cheers, Andrew
PS. Alan ... glad to be a "help" /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif. Might be bugging (tapping is it LOL) you about maple syrup. We tapped the four trees out front last year and made some ... want to have it more "together" for next year. Also need to go and see if I can find a few more trees in the back "woods".
