The sage continues...............
Out to the farm, fill with fertilizer. I have two rounds to finish the field and my gf had one. I notice that my NH3 is sticking on which is odd. But I shut it off at the tank, we fold up the drills and head to the next field. I get my gf going first, set up the fert rates for the next field then let her go. I look at my NH3 nitrolator and can't find the problem. It has power and so the solenoid should be in the off position when there is no power. So back to the yard (adjacent field thankfully) and get dad (electrical engineer) with the voltmeter and start taking some measurements. Voltage and current are correct. We confirm that we can feel the solenoid activating too. One of those WTF moments. So dad wanders off to do some other things and I took the nitolator apart and cleaned the two screens in there. A small one that was plugged with some rust and a larger one filled with bits of metal and a broken o-ring of some sort - or maybe a seal?
Put it all back together after climbing under the hitch so many times I lost count, banging various body parts in the process.
And for some reason it works. I don't understand how it works and due to its age I was not able to find a cutaway on the web either. The company while still in business doesn't make nitrolators anymore either.
I lost 4 hours, an easy 100 acres missed. Thankfully my gf just sails along with her drill.
So I head back out to the field and start seeding and as I'm started the headland on my side of the field I have about 1 1/2 miles to go. Reach the end, shut off the NH3 and the pressure gauge drops to zero! Turn around and hit the switch and the pressure goes up. It is indeed working!
Send dad to town to get more granular fertilizer.
Cousin Brad calls and says he can come out and I ask him to replace me as I am just whacked. Dad comes out, stalls the grain truck in the field so we can't load with fertilizer until we get it running which takes 15 - 20 minutes. Then after that Dad stalls it again taking the truck to the edge of the field. Then dad somehow decides that while we have three pickups at the farm we can use he wants Brad to replace the wheel bearing on a forth pickup instead of him seeding!
Even my gf was stunned at this. But we left and headed home to rest up.
Talked with Aidan, no medals at the track and field competition but he said he "talked with lots of girls". Good he knows what is more important!
Spence, regarding that the school may know that "Aidan's proud father would be there" is very true. IF AIDAN"S PROUD FATHER KNEW WHEN THE CEREMONY WAS! As they never called it was not until the day before that Aidan told me and then he told me that he wasn't sure if he had made the honor roll or not. What I found funny was when he was elementary school they had no difficulty when he won the Advanced Reading aware for four straight years and a phys-ed award one year in calling me to let me know. The secretary did say she was sorry and it would not happen again. I asked her which - me being called or Aidan being on the honor roll again - we had a good laugh!
No word from Steve yet if they started the work yesterday.
Off the farm, both drills filled, should be an easy day. We should finish the 2nd and 3rd fields if we have no issues...................