With only 22mm in Nov, flanked by 70mm odd the months either side, things were starting to look pretty grim. The hills had burnt right off with the wind, (still at it too), although the river flats were still pushing a bit of grass up.
The T-shoes are mounted on spring tines, so sharp turns are out of the question, all sorts of funny cultivation happens if you do.
I therefore use electric fence pegs to mark straight travel lands to drill to, and I did notice they were hard to force into the ground the first 1-2", then went easily, damper soil deeper down.
I've only had the drill about 8 or so years, and this is the first dry spring sow I've had to contend with, so the lesson I've learnt to try next dry one, is to sow deeper to get the boot under the dry surface, and maybe not use the covering harrow to avoid getting the seed buried too deep.
Speaking of rain and weather, I recently installed one of those remote weather stations that transmit all the data to the console inside the house, range up to 100m, Thermor brand, made in China, got it from Farmlands. Saves getting your feet wet. Apart from rain, it does humidity, temp indoor and out, wind speed and direction, and a 24hr barometric trend graph. The old conventional rain gauge is nearer ground level about 20m away, and I've found the fancy one measures up to 1-2mm less each rain episode. Not really sure why this happens, possibly there is a site variation maybe due to proximity to ground level, or as someone commented, there may be more spiders in the bottom of the old gauge. Also had a problem when the electronics failed and a couple days drizzle never showed on the console, which necessitated a reboot.Like all things electronic, you need an operator sixth sense.
One thing it does the conventional isnt very good at, is record heavy dew-fall
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