Geo Storm Affects Farmers' Tractors

I never met a farmer yet that didn't have a few old tractors lying around...

There are many old 50+ year old tractors around,but are they ready to work,or will they need a lot of work to get back in service?

I wish they made new tractors as durable and serviceable as the old ones.I don't think you will see any modern tractors in 50 years,unless they are in a museum.

I suppose you could bury a wire and put a signal on it like the utilities folks do for locating buried wires and pipes. The question is whether it would be cost effective, given that this was a 20 year event and only lasted a couple of days.

A geo storm is not the only thing that can shut down the GPS satellites,I am thinking of an enemy doing it..or an EMP burst from high altitude.It could severely affect the entire country.

I have seen wire guided robots that were guided by magnets embedded in the concrete.It told them where to turn,stop,load,unload and return to queuing station for the next order.They are used in factories like GM.

The magnets were positioned in a coded manner with polarity sensing reed switches in the robot,and a tachometer monitoring wheel rotations and calculating position with correction codes used to compensate for irregularities in the wheel and floor.

The same could be done wirelessly with only buried magnets to give position.

The cost would be a lot less than one failed crop.

Imagine a series of magnets,coded such that the first magnets compose a "start read" code,then the last magnet bits have a check sum and a parity bit and the final bit(s) is the "end read" code.

How much would it cost to bore a small 2 Inch(50 MM) or less hole below the subsoiler depth to place the magnets of proper polarity and spacing.It would not have to be done all at once,but incorporated over time at say,end of season,or even adding an attachment(second "boot") below the subsoiler to place the magnets like a seeder does with seed.The magnets could be flipped alternately when needed to create the desired code.Initially the magnets would align themselves in the chute with same polarity,but when flipped,they would repel themselves down the placement chute by the mutual repulsion of the magnet above.

I have an image in my mind of how this would work,but not the necessary skill to draft it in total.

Someone with more sand in the top of their hour glass could further develop this idea.I put this out for public consumption so that it may not be patented,but free for all to use.

Accuracy of position would depend on spacing and design of the code,down to the mm if required.

A Faraday shield,perhaps charged,around all computer functions would shield from nefarious or natural interference.

This would replace the need for GPS eventually and form a more secure guidance system.

Just thinkin'.

That's an interesting idea. It's sort of like a hard drive, only on a much larger scale and with lower data density.

It just might work if you can protect the magnets from the environment and the plow disks.

I think all you would need is a field code number and a locator, instead of locating wires along the rows all you need to do is start in the same place facing the same direction and replay a recorded program for that field...If there is a time variation due to field conditions then you might get by with a location beacon at the start and end of each row...or perhaps a laser positioning system...then again cost comes into play..

It seems that the issue was (obviously) debilitating with self-driving equipment. But from the John Deer correspondence, it seems that tractors could still be manually operated. Precision farming was impacted, but then that is the price you pay - a once in 11 yrs outage of a few days. If GPS is deteriorated by malicious actors, then farmers can go back to "normal" farming with somewhat lower output per hectare, plus probably higher input costs per hectare, unless they only have fully autonomous equipment.

Wires in the ground are complicated in farming: the rows are not always the same as you change crops or layouts, and you sometimes have to deep-break the ground. Radio direction finder - type of positioning will probably be less intrusive and still accurate enough?

That is why I mentioned buried magnets instead of wires.Much cheaper and easier to install.Install them deeper than the subsoiler by attaching a feeder chute below the subsoiler.,and code them with alternating N/ S polarity.Row placement,once established would be permanent.No GPS needed.Row spacing could also be accommodated with coded magnet arrays.Grey code could be used for absolute positioning and would not be lost in case of power failure.

The LORAN system was a good navigation system that didnt depend on high end electronics. Might not be accurate enough by itself (accurate to 100s of feet) for this specific purpose but other methods could get there.

We did away with LORAN since GPS satellites became so dependable but many, many people wanted a backup knowing how vulnerable they are. LORAN is hard to jam or easily disable as LORAN uses low frequency radio signals. Some are working to make a more accurate and longer range version with less infrastructure needs (eLORAN).

But unless something bad happens, it probably wont be deployed as most Politicians refuse to learn from past mistakes and prefer to make "new" ones.

I was outside enjoying the nice weather today when a couple of tractors went down the road. Suddenly it dawned on me that we're making this topic much too complex. The tractors would have to have a way of operating on the highway; therefore there is a simple way to turn the GPS off and manually steer it. If the GPS refuses to operate as it should, just shut it off.

redundancy is lacking in many areas of critical infrastructure , Navigation , communications , hospitals data management and patient care systems.

Its not only GPS that is affected by a Solar Storm , from may 11 - 14th i had a brand new I-Phone battery that died , a Solar Inverter died , and GPS wouldnt navigate closer to 300 metres accuracy .

Thats just from a Solar Storm , What will everyone do in response to an EMP when the doors at your bank wont open , the owners of companies that fill ATM Cash machines have been told not to fill them with cash , Crypto and CBDC cant be traded , Govt mandates it illegal to possess cash or gold , mobile phone and WiFi have all died , Electricity Grid is offline , no trucks on the road , no fuel in the gas stations , no food in the shops and friendly neighbours start killing each other for a sandwich ...
First World countries run by 3rd world government , controlled by shadowy figures in the family of Bankers.

Expecting the Morse code to somehow help you in a modern battle isn't the most st*pid thing I'm aware USN is thinking lately, just close.

Anyway, farming related automation is way more than absolute positioning, with two electronic "beacons" appropriately distanced, a revolving directional receiver on each machine and some electronic hocus pocus you can get perfect positioning on local level. But automation can be from determining the seed, fertilizer and watering params per premapped area, to automatic seeding and harvesting according to previous years' statistics and weather, and since all that technology is propriatery to machinery companies there's not much inscentive for changes. Not even for conventional aspects like machinery maintenance. Smaller scale farmers do try to react, but...

Anyway, these problems, coming from rapid change, will get resolved with time, the one thing I hope, considering the international situation, is we'll not need radiation hardened equipment any time soon. S.M.

Morse code is stupid?

Several months ago I saw (YouTube??) a speed contest between Morse and smart phone texting. Morse code won!

Wouldn't argue smartphone texting is any smarter in a morden battle. S.M.

Modern devices are very nice and convenient,but it is still valuable to know how to survive off grid,build a fire,hunt and forage.When the S.H.T.F.,the HAM operators will be the only form of long distance communication,and these guy speak Morse Code like a second language and have MC generators that can send an receive faster than any human.Not digital,analog,but can be converted to any language if required when digital is eventually revived from it's cold slumber.

They can build and repair their own equipment when needed.

Hats Off To HAMS(H.O.T.H.)Always nice to have a back up plan,(but I will never argue with you).