Picture: David White's LEXION 480 reaches the half way mark, clocking up 500 tonnes harvested after nine hours.
In a 21 hour marathon combining session finishing at 5.00am yesterday morning, David White's CLAAS LEXION 480 harvested 1000.59 tonnes at Berwick Bassett near Swindon, smashing the unofficial record of 720 tonnes set in Lincolnshire last year.
Whilst many people consider 500 tonnes a day to be good going, starting at 8.00am on Wednesday, the LEXION cleared 80ha of Claire yielding on average 12.53t/ha, from which the headlands had already been cut.
Last year's record of 720 tonnes in 16 hours was passed at 10.50pm after 14.5 hours, and with no dew during the night, the White's set their sights on the 1000 tonne mark with the last trailer load coming into store at 5.00am at just 14.4% moisture.
Over the 21 hour period the combine, which has a 9m (30ft) cutterbar, maintained an average of nearly 48t/hr, peaking at 72t/hr late Wednesday morning, and included not only stops for re-fuelling, but also 45 minutes lost due to a broken knife at 4.00am.
"I'm thrilled to bits and it's a credit to a really great and enthusiastic team," says David White. "It was all down to luck and a fortunate set of circumstances. To achieve this kind of output you do need a high yield and a large enough area, plus good weather conditions and we were lucky that there was cloud cover and no dew, otherwise we would probably have had to stop at midnight."
