Gents I promissed G4M to post som pics, and here they are. Not the most spectacular ones, but... This was a 1,5 week long course for 5 of our professional soldiers and one sivilian employee.(I had them for two weeks, but we spent som days with other types of fun) 2 of our soldiers has a lisence from earlier, so they didn't need as many hours as the rest. We got 4 graders for the students.(Volvo G976) The course consisted of security regulations, maintenance and practical use. The intention is to give the students 40 hours of practical use, so they can obtain the official lisence. And to give them the mandatory military education on the spesific type of material. Everybody must have spesific training on materiall before use to prevent accidents. My goal was to give all so much practial use, that they can operate it without destroying something/ doing something stupid. Hours in the seat to learn the grader and the levers was the most important, road maintenance and then fill layout third. Prosedures that are rare over here, was not coverd. Of course the education was held at one of the worst time of year. Not enough snow for wintermaintenance, and to much frost for gravel road maintenance. Two graders where most of the time inside our training field. And it looked like hell after the last users...Typical... And then some pics: One day first week, was spent on a Volvo demo.(not part of the course) Still some had their ass in the G976 demo machine. Black trucks are Volvo 700hp, 50t total weight.
More pics. From our training area, guys are working on levelling it. Battle tank ditches stops tanks...and graders..
Last ones. We lined up and drove out to a spot on a wide gravel road, with some wear tracks and ice. 4 graders after each other, made a good job on that road. Last one hade serrated edges, so the gravel stayed in the road and the ice/snow was thrown in the ditch. No pics though.
Thanks for sharing MKTEF! Looks like you guys was having fun there. Yes, hard time of year for a grader course. Do you teach the new operators "ditching" as part of your course? Maybe in your line of work with the graders there is no requirement for it? Great pictures... When we have a grader course its a week long event. Classroom (first day) then the rest of the week playing in the dirt. We cover ditching, grading, shaping the road, elevations, leveling gravel etc.. We just take a section of road and rebuild it. Works great for the Supervisor in the training area as he gets a road rebuilt.
That looks like fun! :drinkup What's the little white thingy attached to the rear of one of the green graders?
Crash device (aka impact attenuator) in case someone doesn't realize the green thing is actually a grader and not a tree with a beacon on it and decides to drive into it. It extends out behind the grader/truck/whatever and absorbs the crash impact. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Impact_Attenuator_In_Auckland.jpg
I could be wrong but I think its a windrow eliminator. Below is a few more pictures from MKTEF.
G4M; you are right its a windrow eliminator. In fact it lays the gravel back on the road, so you only have to do one pass. It is a realy nice thing, especialy when u take the masses up of the ditch and into the road. The spreader got serrated blades, so the grass, beercans, rocks and roots goes back in the ditch while the gravel is left on the road. I learn them a bit of ditching, so much they understand that the gravel over time goes into the ditch. And that it needs to bee graded up and onto the road after a while. At the course i put them to "build" a road, by making the ditches and using the masses in the middle.(on the training area) I tried to get some inputs on where the administration needed grading done, but no response. I am a bit angry on that, they pay a local contractor huge amounts of money and our military graders is parked in the garage. (A grader over here is apr 250-300$ pr hour.) Normaly i only get a couple of requests pr year. So i just dont care, take the grader and use it where i find it suitable.