You're never to old to have fun in a field.

One of the things that has struck me from reading Classic Tractor is how people enjoy their passions - whether those passions are knitting, reading, gardening, cooking, playing sports, taking nature walks, or, say - tractors.

For a yarn-o-phile such as myself, the Alpaca tent at the Murrambateman Field Day is my idea of a great day out.  There's fleece a plenty, interesting people, cool animals and of course, yarn. Now I think of it, my dedication to the Alpaca tent may be why I haven't learnt much about tractors at the Field Day yet. 

For other people, a great day out also involves a field.  But instead of alpacas, substitute in three Massey-Ferguson tractors, a tractor trailer, big bags of fertiliser (1000kg of big) and a little device called a Pressure Control system.

Basically a Pressure Control system is coupler and chain that loops around a trailer's drawbar, and works to increase the traction of the tractor.  Apparently the device never really caught on in the tractor set: Classic Tractor laments that "many farmers viewed it as a gimmick".  Never one to be deterred by trends or popularity though, Classic Tractor decided to test out how well the system actually worked.

Now, to be fair, they had a pretty thorough system of testing worked out.  They used three different tractors, each with different pulling power.  The tractors were tested first without the pressure system, and the wheel slip was measured.  The tractor was then fitted with the Pressure Control system and the wheel slip was remeasured, over the same course.

The results were pretty impressive - the MF 165 had a 33% wheel slip without the system and 8.4 tonnes of fertiliser.   With the system, and front weights on the tractor, the wheel slip was only 16% for a 10.8 tonne load.  (That's a lot of fertiliser.)  All very serious stuff, and valuable information.

Still, as I read the article I see:

A lot of people standing around in a field very intently watching a tractor:

A tractor doing a wheelie:

(The text in the article was "All four former MF employees warned us that Pressure Control wouldn't work without front weights attached.  They were right, as this picture demonstrates.")

And four very happy looking farmers at the end of the day:

And I suspect this whole thing was less about the impressive percentages and more about being out in a field with some tractors, some fertiliser and generally having a Good Day Out.   And there's certainly nothing wrong with that.