With its ground clearance of 1.2m, Amazone’s Pantera self-propelled sprayer is ideally suited to most operational situations in plant production. For treating tall maize crops or in sunflowers, however, an even larger ground clearance is required to avoid plant damage. For such applications Amazone now offers, as an option, a hydraulic height adjustment for the chassis. All machines featuring this height adjustment are designated as the Pantera 4502-H.
By just pressing a button on the on-board computer, the driver can lift the en-tire machine up to a ground clearance of 1.7 m. If the machine is in its lifted position, its track width can be adjusted between 2.1 and 2.6 m. In this way the Pantera 4502-H, despite its higher centre of gravity, proves to be highly stable and at the same time can be flexibly utilised in a variety of crops and track width spacings.
One unique characteristic of the Amazone solution is that it maintains its still very wide track width range. So, in normal operation where only 1.25 m ground clearance is required, the track width of the machine can be adjusted from 1.8 to 2.4 m. However, especially for agricultural contractors who wish to offer flexible crop protection services over a greater variety of customers and crops, they are able to operate at narrower track widths in areas with smaller field sizes. With the Pantera 4502-H, the scope for crop protection applications is significantly extended and thus increases the machine’s capacity.
Steering system with row scanning
Especially in hilly terrain, and on long working days, the driver needs to keep the highest concentration levels to always precisely steer the lifted machine through the crop rows. To solve this problem, Amazone, in co-operation with the company Reichhardt, offers the pre-installation for a row sensing system. The system operates with sensor ‘fingers’ which the driver can swivel out from underneath the machine by pressing a button. These ‘fingers’ scan along the crop rows and control the automatic steering system exactly in such a way that the wheels of the Pantera travel in between the crop rows. The highly precise system prevents any damage to the crop and relieves the stress on the driver; enabling him to concentrate on all other tasks during the treatment.
