Goodbye Kubota, hello EarthForce

[MChalkley]

Re: Ear Protection TBN \"deal\"

I heard back from John at Shooter's Safety Products today. Here's the deal: He'll give everybody at TBN a 20% discount (that's 5% more than I got). Here's what you do to get the special price. You can order them one of two ways:

1) Call John at 724-628-2437 and tell him you want the "TBN price" on a pair of Pro-Ears.

2) Order them online at <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.shooterssafetyproducts.com/ProEarsInfo.htm>this link</A>. This is the info page, and there's a link to the order page at the bottom. When you place the order, put "TBN" in the comments field, and he'll deduct the discount when he processes the order. Your discount will not show up in the online screen, but he will deduct it before your card is charged.

For what it's worth, I ordered the Pro-Mag model, which is a little heavier, but gives you 26db of noise reduction instead of 24db. I also ordered the Dimension 2, which you might want if you're going to hook a radio up to them, but the Dimension 1 is cheaper because it doesn't have the radio input jacks.

 

[Charlie_Iliff]

Re: Ear Protection TBN \"deal\"

Mark:
Just ordered mine. Maybe I won't put the supplemental muffler on the PT. That way everyone will always know when I'm using it.

 

[Charlie_Iliff]

Re: EF-5 Brush Brute\'ing & Ear Protection

<font color=red>"This machine still amazes me almost every time I use it. So much so that I may rent an EF-300 from Folcomer soon just to compare it with the EF-500 and the L4310."</font color=red>
Mark: Sounds like a good article topic if you can find the right magazine.
Let me know if you're coming to Baltimore. My office is downtown, but this time of the year I'm easily decoyed away from my desk.

 

[pajoube]

Re: EF-5 Brush Brute\'ing & Ear Protection

Did you hvae any trouble with ear pinching? When I have worn the ear protectors for shooting after about an hour they starting pinching agains the ears.
PJ

 

[MChalkley]

Re: EF-5 Brush Brute\'ing & Ear Protection

PJ - I've had that problem with the Stihl muffs built into my logging helmet - bigtime. But, I've found the Pro-Ears to be very comfortable. As with anything that covers your whole ear, I sweat under the pads a bit, but the pads are extremely comfortable, and the cups are large enough that they don't press on my ears.

By the way, I've started a new discussion in the Safety forum on the Pro-Ears headsets, since it's most relevant to that forum, and I doubt the majority of TBN members visit the "Other Brands" forum often.

 

[MikePA]

Re: EF-5 Brush Brute\'ing & Ear Protection

<font color=blue>I doubt the majority of TBN members visit the "Other Brands" forum often.</font color=blue>
You're probably right, but if they don't, they miss a lot of good information. The only reason I visit here is cuz I know MChalkley does. /w3tcompact/icons/clever.gif Sometimes the information comes to you, other times ya gotta go find it! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[MChalkley]

Re: EF-5 Brush Brute\'ing & Ear Protection

Thanks, Mike. /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif I try to visit most of the forums to learn as much as I can myself, but these days, there's so much activity here that I often find myself way behind. I guess quite a few others must have the same problem. And I can imagine that many folks just aren't interested in "Other Brands". Quite a few are only interested in there particular brand of the "Big 3", for that matter. But I hope everyone is interested in safety. So that's why I duplicated the info there. (Thanks for the kind words - my need for approval is getting desperate - I'm beginning to feel a little self-conscious about being so out-numbered by the PowerTrac guys... /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif)

 

[DVerbarg]

Re: EF-5 Brush Brute\'ing & Ear Protection

Mark,

Don't ya think you should start a new post instead of continuously adding the the original "Hello EarthForce, GoodBye Kubota"?/w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif Love to follow the developments of your EF and accessories. Learn bunches by reading your posts, but have to scroll through pages to find the new posts. Just my .02

Muhammad,
Can MarkC have a forum for the EarthForce? His thread is getting too long (now 20 pages/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif) and yet I can see where it might make sense to keep all the earthforce items grouped together.

 

[MChalkley]

Re: EF-5 thread too long?

DaveV - I can see where having to scroll through so many messages would be a real pain. It's never been a problem to me, because I use flat mode, so all I have to do is click directly on the last page.

I don't know what would be the best way to handle it. Since I'm in "Other Brands", I don't really want a hundred different threads, because they'll just get lost amongst everything else and nobody will ever see them again. On the other hand, if this thread is too long for people to bother with, they won't look at it anyway.

As for Muhammad creating an EarthForce forum, I'd like that, but there's only one person on TBN with an EarthForce machine, so that certainly doesn't seem to scale well. I predict there will soon be a lot more EarthForce machines out there than there are now for some of the brands that already do have their own forum, though. What I won't predict, however, is that there will be a lot of TBN owners with them, because TBN has (so far) been oriented more to "consumer" or "hobbyist" tractors than "commercial", "industrial" or "professional" tractors. Not that there isn't a lot of overlap, and I certainly don't intend to infer that one is better than the other, just different types of equipment for different usage purposes. So, what to do?

I have seriously considered leaving TBN a number of times because it seemed to me, from the equipment owned by the vast majority of the membership and the uses it's put to, that it didn't warrant the time and effort I put into posting my rambling reports of research, experiences, etc. But every time I think that, somebody (or a dozen somebodies) offer feedback that indicates I'm on the wrong track. Every time I've hinted at it, I've gotten a bunch of public posts and, usually, a bunch more private messages. I appreciate that - it tells me what I needed to know. So, I continue to hang around. I benefit from TBN as much as anybody, but I'm not going to stay here just to ask questions and get info for myself. If it doesn't appear that the contributions I can make are useful to the typical TBN member, I feel honor-bound to go somewhere else, because it's just not right to get more than you give. I believe that's true for all areas of life, not just tractor forums. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Which takes me back to where I started - what to do? I would really like to see more "commercial", "industrial", or "professional" membership and participation here on TBN, but I'm not sure how to make that happen. Muhammad already has a Construction Equipment forum, but that's little used. Maybe it's my fault because I put this thread in the "Other Brands" forum instead. My reason at the time was that I thought people who could benefit from considering an EarthForce machine instead of a CUT would look at this forum, while they would tend to ignore the Construction forum. An EarthForce machine isn't a CUT, but there's very little a CUT can do that an EarthFoce machine can't, given the fact that it can take almost any attachment a skid steer can and doesn't tear up the lawn like a skid steer will. Granted, they're not the best machine around for mowing lawns, but who needs TBN to tell them how to mow a lawn? And while we're at it, the guy who buys a "huge" CUT (compared to a riding mower) will end up 9 times out of 10 using it just as much for jobs an EarthForce machine would be a lot better at as he does for mowing grass. So, now which machine would be better for him? Or, looked at another way, he'd be a lot better off with an EarthForce machine and a lawn mower, than beating the CUT to death doing stuff it's not big enough to do, while he beats his lawn to death cutting it with a machine too big to for that. (Ooops, I stepped up on the soap box without intending to, so enough of that.)

Um, I think that still leaves me at, you guessed it, "what to do?" I don't know. As I say, I think I and my EarthForce really belong on a different board more than I do TBN, but I like TBN and the gang here - there's no place else like it. I guess you just wanted me to kill this thread and start another one - you didn't intend to open this can of worms. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif Ok, I can do that, I guess. But I'd like to hear what Muhammad and others think, too...

 

[MChalkley]

Re: EF-5 Brush Brute\'ing & Ear Protection

Charlie - You're right, a comparison of the EF-500, EF-300 and a CUT the size of the L4310 would make an intersting article. In some ways they can't be compare, of course, but in others, well, as you say, it would be interesting.

The next time I'm going to Folcomer's I'll give you a warning shout - maybe we can hook up for lunch.