Technical
The Amenity Sprayer Operator of the Year Awards, sponsored by Syngenta and ICL (formerly Everris), highlight the exceptional skills and experience of all those involved. The winners have demonstrated best practice for effective results and, above all, safe spray application in amenity situations.
Dan Lightfoot, Syngenta UK Business Manager, visited the winner of the amenity turf boom sprayer category, Andrew Kerr from West Malling Golf Club in Kent.
“We recognise that the skills of the operator are paramount in achieving the best possible results,” said Dan. “The Awards are a welcome way to recognise and reward the leading individuals and to learn from their experience”
Winning Tips
From the top sprayer man...
Andrew is Course Manager of the two 18-hole parkland courses at West Malling. Sharing his tips and practical ideas that impressed the judges could help other operators and greenkeepers to get the best out of every application.
Amenity Forum Chairman, Professor John Moverley, added: “The ASOOTY Awards has judged all aspects of amenity spraying to identify the UK’s very best operators. It is
designed to share their skills and expertise across the industry.”
“It has been evident that all the entrants have consistently shown outstanding skills and work to very high standards, to achieve the best possible results. The selected finalists have proved worthy winners by demonstrating that best practice can deliver efficient, cost effective and accurate amenity spraying.”
Andrew has checked the water volume marks of the sprayer tank are accurate for the amount being filled. The sprayer is always parked on the same level area for filling. Best practice is to fit a flow meter on the water filling hose, to check exactly how much is going into the tank. That is particularly important if the area to be treated often varies, when selectively treating just a few susceptible greens for example - see the ‘Top Tip’ for measuring greens area
124 I PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2016
Andrew’s sprayer is regularly serviced to keep it in good condition. Although the machine is several years old, a good operator is still perfectly capable of achieving very high levels of accuracy, providing wearing parts are replaced when necessary. Annual NSTS certification checks it is all working well
Auto-rate controllers that adjust application rate to forward speed have helped immensely with improving spray accuracy. Checking they are functioning correctly is an important element of the maintenance and calibration regime. Forward speed can be checked using a free app on a mobile phone with GPS - which is a useful tip if you haven’t an accurate speedo on the sprayer
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