Traffic Calming

Theanne suggests I should have gone and pulled the two cars involved in the accident apart, I didn't think of that, to be honest if I had gone with the tractor I would have been tempted to drive over the lot of them, they do my head in. They are so erratic its unreal. I took the video today when taking a load of Wheat to the brewery.

I am continuing to harvest Wheat at the moment, I have four more fields to cut, the picture below is of the combine unloading in to the other trailer.

 Setting Sun at Chellington.

Car Accident

I intended harvesting the three fields on the topside of the main road today so I took a walk through them early this morning just to check the lay of the land and all was well until I dropped back down to the road at the junction of the main road and the Mill Lane where I discovered an accident between two cars. This doesn't surprise me one bit as they all seem to drive like idiots. I was approaching a junction last night and one under took me on the grass verge! Anyway I hung around long enough to take this video but as no one seemed to going anywhere I headed off back home across the fields.

New Holland Baler Video.

I did this video to go with the last post but I've been having trouble with my phone line so wasn't able to post until now. It will give an idea of how the baler works in the game, in the top centre of the screen is the bale counter, in the left corner is the control info panel for the baler and the tractor.

I know I said that I wasn't going to change my farm again and that I had settled for Kincraigie but last night I just happened to see another farm that I liked the look of and so I am giving it a go. It's called Chellington and is set in England so feels a bit more like home and has lots of unique features and nice scenery so I'm going to try and stay focused on this farm now, I will do some pictures and video's over the weekend.

New Holland Baler.

At the weekend I managed to get the Wheat and Barley all harvested, baled up and carted away. I didn't have a baler so I had to go and buy this New Holland which works fine. It has an animated tail gate and pick up reel plus a bale counter which records total bales for all time and total bales for each field. It also makes all the right noises which I think is important for the enjoyment of the game.

I had a slight problem with the elevator on the East Peak Farms, I only managed to get 1 bale in about 5 attempts to actually make it to the top without falling off. Is it meant to take the big square bales? Anyway thankfully there is what seems to be a power generating plant that takes the bales for cash so apart from the previously mentioned ONE bale all the rest went in there.

Another problem I had was when loading bales on to a trailer. I would get some loaded on after a bit of a struggle and then whilst I went to get some more the ones already loaded on would fall off which was quite annoying. In the end I gave up on that and bought a self loading trailer, I would like to get the hang of loading on to a flatbed trailer though.

Later today I hope to harvest some corn, I will see how that goes. I'm farming two farms at the moment, East Peak Farms and Kincraigie. I don't want to farm more than one but can't make my mind up which one I like the best. I had four on the go at one time but decided that come Easter I had to settle for just one and then get some proper work done. I made the choice of Kincraigie but then relented as I also really like East Peak Farm. I would go with East Peak Farm if it didn't seem a bit lacking in some details so I think that maybe in time it would bug me to think I was missing out on some aspects of the game so I'm sort of going with Kincraigie and dabbling on and off with East Peak Farm.

If you want to take a look for yourself at either of the above farms this is the link for Kincraigie http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/5/22969 and this is East Peak Farm http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/5/22819 

I will leave you with some pictures of the New Holland baler that I bought, if you want to download it also you will find it here http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/34/17161

New For Old.

There are some maps that you can download for Farming Simulator 2011 that come with a good compliment of machinery but there are others that don't. One of my favourite maps called East Peak Farms comes with very old machinery, all of which needs replacing if you want to get some serious work done. Another thing is that quite often this machinery is located in some obscure place like the top of a mountain! So what I did instead of transporting a load of old machinery back to the farm was to go to the farm shop and sell if off where it was and replace it with some of the cheap Mods that I've been posting about.

What you start with on East Peak Farms.

So the point of this post is to show you what you can acquire to get you started. You can swap everything in the video above for that in the video below plus the $6000 allowance you are provided with when you start a career.

One more thing about this sort of map is that if you're new to the game you might have trouble locating the machinery by eye simply because its way out in the wilderness somewhere so the easy way to find it is to press the TAB key and it will straight away take you to a piece of machinery with an engine. Keep pressing the TAB button and it will cycle through all the machinery with an engine and usually the implements are all close by.

New Holland Combine Pack.

This is going to be my last post in this series of cheap machinery, I will post more in time but I have other stuff that I want to post about. Below is the the New Holland combine pack which can be found here http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/53/16679

With the pack comes a New Holland combine, a grain header, corn header and header trailer. You can pick up the whole lot for an in game price of $13.

New Holland Combine with grain header fitted.

Corn header for the combine.

Header trailer.

I must warn you that something rather strange happened when I coupled the header trailer to the combine with the corn header loaded. I had already used the trailer to move the grain header with a tractor and it worked great but when coupled to the combine with the other header the trailer started spinning throwing the corn header up the farm shop yard. I don't know what cause it to do this.

Another thing that doesn't seem quite right is the length of time it takes for the tank to empty on the combine, it seems very slow. It's not a real problem with the way I play the game because I just leave it emptying in to a trailer while I take a full one filled previously to empty, by the time I return the tank has finished getting rid of the contents. Because of these faults I would probably only choose to use this combine because it's so affordable when you're first getting started in the game.

Claas Mower.

Today's cheap offer at the farming shop is this Claas mower which goes for $0, which you can download here http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/31/15412 The thing I like about this mower is that it leaves the swath in a row and not all spread around like most of the mowers on Farming Simulator seem to do. I haven't tried them all of course so no doubt there are some that leave the cut grass in a row.

I didn't get chance to make a video of this mower as I needed to get some straw baled last night but I did get some pictures for you to take a look at. These were taken on the way back from the farm shop.

OOPS! As I turned in to the farm drive I collected a car which tipped the mower on to it's side! I had to drag the darn thing half way down the drive before the darn thing got back on it's wheels LOL!

David Brown 1690

To continue the theme of free or nearly free machinery at the Farming Simulator farm shop I am going to show you a David Brown 1690. The Mod is actually a twin pack of David Browns, the second one costing I think $6000 so in the true tradition of being a so called tight farmer I haven't tried the other one yet however I can tell you that the 1690 featured today works fine although I haven't tried anything on the front linkage yet. I believe it's a work in progress still but I haven't found any faults with the way it works. So if you fancy taking a look for yourself you will find it here:
http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/29/12171

And for a look at it in action take a look at the video.

Claas Telehandler.

As promised last night I am going to share a few Mods that are free or cost next to nothing to acquire. All the Mods I have seen are free to download so when I mean free to buy I am talking about within the game itself from the farming shop.

Today I am showing the Claas Telehandler, I've been playing around with it a for a while and everything I have tried works okay except I can't get it to pick up a trailer so I don't think it will do that, if I find one that it will pick up I will let you know. As you will see from the video you can choose between front axle steer, rear axle steer or both axle steering by cycling with the letter 'U'. The boom extends as you would expect and it has front and rear working lights and that's about it really - simple but effective.

If you want to download it you will find it here http://www.ls-uk.info/downloads/88/16883

Below is a short demo video taken in the farming shop yard on East Peak Farms map.

Wellbrook Field Plan.

Over the weekend I've spent quite a bit of time getting a feel for things on the Farming Simulator. Most of my time was spent on the Wellbrook farm where I did various jobs to do with harvesting work. I also tried out a few 'Mods' and I managed to find a field plan which covers all three Wellbrook farms, this proved very useful as I find it quite a maze when traveling around the place so I put the field plan up on my PC while I played the game on my laptop so I was able to keep on referring back to the plan.

Wellbrook Field Plan

I also spent some time back at East Peak Farms, again I was working on harvesting although I didn't really finish anything off.

I've also located some 'Mods' that are free or as close to free as you're going to get and I will be sharing them through the rest of this week. I'm not saying that they are top quality or anything just that they are cheap to buy at the farming shop and from my experience with them they work okay.

I've also started a new game at Orchard farm, I must stop looking at Maps or I will be forever changing. Orchard Farm is set on the fertile Fens of England so is flat land with medium to large fields. I'm not sure how long it will hold my interest but unlike Wellbrook this farm is easy to move around on provided you can negotiate the narrow lanes with your equipment. I find I can spend more time farming on this map than trying to find how to get from one location to another. The more I play any of these games though the more I realise how much I have to learn.