OTA Holds Staff Education Event
/The Ozark Turf Association held a well-attended education event for OTA members equipment managers and assistant superintendents at Fremont Hills Country Club. The meeting even included some superintendents attending with their staff. VanWall Equipment sponsored the meeting.
OTA past president and Fremont Hills superintendent Sam Richart hosted the meeting and introduced our first speaker, Jordan Roth, Certified Turf Equipment Manager (CTEM) from Champions Club in Omaha Nebraska, where Jordan is the equipment manager. Jordan gave a presentation to those in attendance on “Electrical Diagnostic Methods and Tools”. After that presentation he gave a brief talk on maintenance shop set up.
The second speaker was Matt Giese, a technical manager from Syngenta. His presentation was on “Spreader and Sprayer Calibrations” Matt showed a power point on the reasons and method of calibration spreaders and sprayers, and after the power point, those interested in participating in actual calibration practices headed outside on a beautiful fall day. First up was the spreader calibration portion of the demonstration. Matt enlisted attendees in setting up the containers to catch the fertilizer from the spreader; after setting up the container boxes, Sam Richart ran the spreader back and forth a few times to distribute the product. After collecting the product, Matt had attendees pour the fertilizer into measuring jars, where attendees were able to see the distribution pattern, showing how important overlapping plays into a proper granular fertilizer application. The next step was to measure out a path, weigh fertilizer and load it into the spreader, Sam pushed the spreader along the measured distance, after which the remaining fertilizer was weighed and attendees worked to figure out the amount of product applied along with the percentage of nitrogen that was in the application.
After the spreader calibration was done, the group moved over to the sprayer, Matt led them into checking for nozzle performance, where they held measuring pitchers under the nozzles collecting water. After that process, they checked the speed of the sprayer over a measured distance, and with both the speed and the volume of water they collected in the pitchers, Matt lead the group in figuring out the gallons per acre the spray rig was putting out. It was noted that most modern spray equipment will apply the required amount of water volume, but this exercise provided an opportunity to check and make sure the equipment is operating properly.
While this group was participating in the calibration process, equipment managers stayed inside were Jordan lead a round table discussion, allowing the equipment managers to learn from each other and creating a networking opportunity for the group.
Afterwards the group enjoyed some delicious smash burgers from the grill. The OTA would like to thank Jordan Roth, CTEM, and Matt Giese for leading the education portion of the meeting, territory manager Matt Strong with VanWall Equipment for sponsoring, and Sam Richart and Fremont Hills for hosting this well attended event. Also, thanks to Sam and Fremont for providing a tee time that some of us took advantage of, the course was in great shape and the weather was perfect.
Photos credited to Melvin Waldron III, CGCS
