Eric
Guest
Colin I think that an air reel wouldn't be of much use to you. We have one here in Australia and from our experience they work best in lighter crops. They work well with lentils that have a large leaf area and are not heavy to blow. In standing wheat anything over about 12-15 bags_acre and there is to much bulk to blow in the front of the machine. We use a pickup reel most of the time, and only use the air reel on specialty crops. The worst is at the throat of the elevator where the crop will slide forward as well as going into the elevator. They work well with flex fronts as you can push the material back of the knife, which you can't do with a finger reel as when the table flex's up it will cut the end off your reel fingers if set to low. Basically the work well on crops that have a large leaf_head surface area to catch the air stream and also crops that have a lighter seed. I assume that you wheat is on the ground and therefore not very dry, so it would be heavy to blow and inclined to stick to the platform. Also you would have trouble getting the air stream behind the plant to blow it in. Sorry about not sounding very positive. Ours cost us about $6,000 a couple of years ago for a 30 footer.