Star performers in managing and maintaining turf

Smithco sprayers will be familiar to many in the golf sector, and the company is now pioneering the latest nozzle control technology for greater accuracy and ease of use, as Jane Carley discovers.

Forward speed is set on the throttle for the required spray quality, and an alert is given if the sprayer is operated outside its parameters. Nozzles are spaced at 25cm giving a high level of accuracy.

PWM also offers turn compensation, increasing flow to the nozzles on the outside of the boom and decreasing flow to the inside when travelling around a curve, maintaining the selected rate.

The spray nozzles are represented on the monitor as a row of lights; this indicates if a blockage has occurred and shows those which are switched off when the sprayer travels over already sprayed ground.

allows the operator to return to a job that has been halted without having to use blob markers.

Supplied by Ernest Doe in England and Wales, Fairways Group in Scotland and Brodericks in Ireland, the sprayers are part of a wider range that also includes rollers and bunker rakes.

The Spray Star ride-on is a collaboration between Philadelphia-based manufacturer Smithco, which builds the skid unit, tank and booms and spray tech specialist Teejet, which provides the control system and nozzles.

Capacities are up to 1000 litres, with booms from 4.5-6.0m mounted on a chassis with hydrostatic drive and cruise control. There’s a wide range of options but the company expects most interest in the highest levels of tech available.

The sprayer uses pulse width modulation (PWM) technology to control nozzle output, allowing application rates to be easily set or adjusted from Teejet’s Aeros terminal.

Teejet’s DynaJet PWM system uses an electronic control valve for each nozzle body to manage it individually. By adjusting the opening of the aperture on the nozzle, droplet size can be controlled precisely to give the required spray quality depending on the product or application and to suit the prevailing weather conditions.

GPS can be used to map the golf course and to then apply a prescribed application rate and spray quality according to that map, turning nozzles on or off to avoid overlaps or misses.

“The cost of chemicals and the time involved in spraying are increasingly of concern to golf club course managers,” explains Smithco’s John Moore.

“There’s also pressure from committees and other parties such as local authorities to control what is applied and when and minimise the impact on the environment.”

“By managing the way liquid is delivered to the nozzles, droplet size can be controlled more accurately, extending the spray window. This is particularly relevant for courses in exposed locations such as at Hunstanton Golf Course in Norfolk, but many courses have a mixture of wooded and open areas which can have an effect on the nozzle output and cause drift.”

Adam McColl, course manager at Gerrards Cross Golf Club, comments: “It’s very straightforward to use. Once the course is mapped, I can create a prescription for every green, tee and fairway, select the prescription on the monitor, check the satellites are visible and start spraying.”

Adam comments that the lowprofile design of the sprayer gives excellent all round visibility which improves safety on a busy course, and that being able to record where applications have been made

“There’s no risk of overspraying or misses because you can see exactly where you’ve been, which avoids wasting chemical. The wide application range also means that we can use one nozzle for a number of different chemicals; we’ll probably only need two different nozzle sizes for all our spraying. It’s a brilliant development for us and makes spraying more efficient.”

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