Mowing Mowing with a GPS

[Toolguy]

I mowed my lawn today with a GPS mounted on the the tractor. I have a Kubota B3030 with a 60" MMM. My lawn is approximately 1.5 acres of mostly wide open area with trees that are bedded or have mulch rings around them. I can just drive around them and no extra trimming is required. Here are the results that I found interesting. My mowing speed at full HST pedal in Medium Range is about 5 MPH. Including backing up, I traveled 4.39 miles. The elapsed time was 1 hour and 5 minutes. I also took the tractor for a short trip down our paved road at WOT in High gear and found out that top speed is 11.5 MPH.

When I was done mowing I had a track of my travels on the screen that showed where I had been. It was an almost perfect outline of my yard that showed everywhere I had driven. Pretty cool. If you have a portable GPS it might be fun to try ity out yourself the next time you mow.

 

[PineRidge]

Actually between the mowing itself, the cruise control, the stereo headphones, and the ballgame running on the overhead TV console I have no time to look at a GPS.

Unless of course it does the driving for me......

 

[shane]

ToolGuy, that's pretty cool. Thanks for sharing. I figure by the mph chart on my finder that when I mow (kinda low tech, huh?) that the length of my drive is right at 10 miles.

 

[danbuf]

Which GPS do you have?
They make a wrist unit that displays speed, elasped distance.. Petty cheap..
Dan

 

[ratter]

I like the ability of my cheap little GPS to calculate the internal area in acres of a circular path that you travel. I'm very bad at guessing the size of a parcel by eyeballing it. So it's nice to have the GPS handy to be able to say ok, that parcel is 1 acre, that one is 5, that one 7, etc etc. On the other hand, I'd be afraid to look at my lawn mowing path....does the GPS have a "chicken with head cut off" mode?

 

[Tim_in_IA]

that is a great idea using it to calculate area. That would help with a lot of things.

I was thinking from the thread title that this was an autopilot thing. Sounds like PineRidge needs one of those with all he has going on in the cab!

 

[PineRidge]

that is a great idea using it to calculate area. That would help with a lot of things.

I was thinking from the thread title that this was an autopilot thing. Sounds like PineRidge needs one of those with all he has going on in the cab!

Cab, I have no cab, I like the bugs that get caught in my teeth.

 

[Tim_in_IA]

PineRidge,

Do you have the tv mounted to your canopy or were you just joking on the TV? Might be a punch line I missed. I am pretty good at that some days.

 

[PineRidge]

Tim I have no TV in the tractor, I was just pulling your leg a bit.

 

[jinman]

Tim I have no TV in the tractor, I was just pulling your leg a bit.

I heard you were going to install a TV, but you'd have to move the soft-serve ice cream machine, so you decided against it.