It was such a nice day, I decided to disk at mom's today.
Brought out the former Danna Farms D5SA and made very little dust, and plenty of noise. 5th gear at 3/4 throttle was plenty fast. As you can see, there wasn't much to turn over. Between my effective plowing last year and lack of rainfall, not much growth. No rain forecasted for a couple of weeks, so I may just have to bring out either a carryall or drag scraper to tidy things up. To keep the unwanted out, a Vee ditch may be in order as well. I'll think about what else to bring out to "play". JM

 

Looks great JM!   I spent the afternoon rescuing a stranded vechicle in a snow drift.  D6C will yard a stuck Suburban out of a snow drift with little effort!!!  

BP.  

JM, what is the approximate speed of the 5SA in 5th gear?    What is the difference in gearing(speed) on a SA as compared to a direct drive dozer unit?  I was fortunate enough to run  some of P Bloom’s machines at Santa Margarita in 2016.  Lost all my pride there and feel comfortable asking stupid questions.   I did stay out of the way of your 8 and pan!    Don

Nice work JM, I am jealous. I need to get back out there myself. I will use the D4 next time ( IThink)

Looks like a fun time. Thanks for sharing the photo's!!!

It was the best 3 hours of my year so far folks! Talk about some good old fashioned (well sort of, no pony motor) therapy! That 3306 is LOUD. I need to muffle it a tad, the aftermarket thingy doesn't really quiet it down as well as a genuine Donaldson muffler.
Speed? I don't have my D5 book handy, but at 5th wide open I wish to guess 4.7 mph? This tractor could have easily pulled in 6th, but I wasn't in any rush. Feels weird disking so close to town and housing. The street in front is well traveled, I got to wave at a lot of folks that know my family. Funny, because I am sure several made a few laps back and forth to watch.
My pay was a big steak lunch from mom, one can't ask for anything better.
The little D2 5U16,971 got to stretch its tracks (literally). I brought out the 10' Goble drag disk equipped with a spare D4 toolbar beam perfectly laid in the trough of the rear gang as a weight. Talk about a perfect fit. As if it was meant to be. In my zest to disk the citrus trees, I succeeded in knocking the left side rails out of kilter. My keen hearing and rough ride indicated something was amiss. I backed it back into proper orientation, and kept an eye on it. Turns out I have a bad roller, as it had a lot of slop. Now I have a small project. LOL.
It ran very well, and much smoother ride than any other D2 tailseat tractors I have ever operated. I am very spoiled with the dual starting!
I will let the ground dry out a couple of days, and maybe bring out CR's former Murray scraper can. Sadly, as it is original orange, and not latter yellow, I will color coordinate with my little Allis Chalmers HD-6E. The little 344 Buda/AC engine is really quiet too, so one less thing for anyone to balk about.
Time to go have some more fun today. Maybe try out my new magnetic drill next? JM

Did a single pass with a 12’ drag scraper today.
A second pass would be better, but I managed to kill a couple of hours and try out one of my D4Ds. I purposely ran in 3rd to keep the dust down.
Loaded up my tailseat D-2 for some TLC as well.
I don’t know if kids were taking a shortcut to school or what, but never seen so many footprints in a field before. I think a nice V ditch around the place may be in order. I’ll have to sleep on that one. Too many choices of toolbar tractors to try out here. Lol.
Wonton soup was for lunch today! JM

JM,  Be sure to keep us informed with photos as you build the moat around the field!! 

Looks like a great job for only one pass.  Out here in the wastelands of KS we use the longer land levelers but they take 5 acres to turn them around.

Jim: I am used to using a Marvin Triplane scraper which is normally 16w x 30long. Those things are SO agile around a field. I really prefer one of those, as they do an excellent job of flattening out a field. Minimum horsepower would be 100 with a crawler to pull one. I spent many long days and nights in the rice fields on a high horse D7E in 5th gear eating dirt.
Had this been a larger field, I gladly would have used one. I opted to haul a D4D SA and the 12' Porter's all as one unit on my trailer. A second or third pass would make things a lot nicer, but since this "field" isn't planted with anything (yet), I will keep it to a minimum.
What do you fellas use out in KS? Back in the pre Triplane days, Marvin used to build landplanes anywhere from 20' to 120' long with buckets about 10' to 16' wide. Those babies took every bit of the 5 acres to turn around on, and guys would complain that they created a "bowl" effect on a leveled field.
Fast forward to nowadays, a Marvin Vari-track winged 3 point scraper is preferred by some that like using large 4wd tractors. Triplane style levelers are now 40' long and 24'wide with folding wings. More acres per shift! JM