Regardless of which death numbers are correct I would bet some pretty good money that very few Texans had made any attempt to prepare for such a thing. I also would bet that few who suffered from the outage have done a single thing to prepare for the next one. I suspect most of the deaths were...
Figure up the cost of a new transmission and or pump or a new tractor and it all ways makes me wonder why so many people try to save a few dollars while risking the potential loss. They knowingly do it, amazing.
In your case you did not know, but now that you know what you should be using go...
As posted above a slight Jack knife or other issues will mess these bail type couplings up. Usually it’s the sides getting bent. My opinion they are junk. I Replace them on any trailor I obtain. What I know as a bulldog style are hard to mess up or have come loose.
Bulldog style hood type...
Would need a laser set up for me to do the job. Hard to do it by eyeball alone.
Running the rake at a bit of a angle might help with minor grade differences, need to change the angle every so often or the direction the tractor is running.
Not sure it helps but, I am running a Kubota with hydrostatic clutch and have found out that I can turn off the tractor engine, and the pto shaft is really easy to turn by hand about a quarter of a turn right or left. Makes a huge difference on lining up the shafts.
Milwaukee tool person here. Have their 16 in chain saw, hedge trimmer, weed eater, blower, pole saw. Great tools to keep in the tool trailor for those occasional smaller jobs when they are handy to have. I consider them to be light job tools.
If doing more than a quick small project the Stihl...
Be sure you have some sort of depth control. Going to deep can create a lot of extra work fast. Other that that it can work well. Done it more than a few times.