Working With Yield Monitors During Harvest

The process of improving data collection continues throughout the field operation:

• You want to watch for and address any special monitor settings or alerts for the specific brand of monitor. This can include moisture and flow sensors not working properly or loss of DGPS signal. Make sure the monitor is actually collecting data. Sometimes one can manually switch off data collection on the monitor and forget to turn it back on..
• If you have a long harvest season, it would be wise to do periodic calibration loads throughout the season to check or improve accuracy. It is suggested to recalibrate if you see more than a five percent difference in error, five lb/bushel differences in test weight, or temperature changes greater than ten degrees.
• It is recommended to take the data card out of the monitor and back-up data onto your personal computer or data storage devices frequently throughout the harvest season. A simple electrical shock from improper wiring or lightning can destroy the data on your card.
• If significant changes are made to the elevator chain, paddles, or flow sensor during harvest, you will need to recalibrate. Tightening the elevator chain, replacing old paddles, or changing the gap of the flow sensor to the paddles changes the outcome of the previous calibration.
• If you run into problems with the monitoring equipment during a field operation, check through the troubleshooting information in the operator’s manual. Contact technical support if you are unable to solve the problem.
• Make sure the data memory card is the correct size for the field operation. Otherwise, you may find you are half way through the field and the card cannot hold any more data.