Flying Horse North Golf Club makes better irrigation decisions with the WatchDog® 3250 and SpecConnect™!
Mark Beitel, golf course superintendent at Flying Horse North Golf Club in Colorado Springs, CO, discusses his experience using a variety of Spectrum® Technologies Watchdog® products and accessories at his golf course.
What is the biggest challenge at your golf course?
The biggest challenge at Flying Horse North is all the different microclimates throughout the golf course. Half of the golf course is in heavily wooded terrain, then there are 5 holes in the wide-open prairie, and a few holes in moderately wooded terrain. The property is also very spread out so when rain moves through it is not unusual to have significantly different rain totals on different areas of the golf course.
How has our product helped improve your turf’s performance or your golf course’s operations?
The Spectrum® Technologies weather station with additional station pups in the field makes monitoring the weather data in different areas of the golf course much easier. There are currently 4 pups in the field, spread out on different areas of the property. Understanding the different microclimates on the property and using the data from the different pups helps us better understand what the needs of the turf are on different sections of the golf course. We might water more on prairie holes and less on holes in the trees where ET is lower and water loss from wind is less.
What types of improvements or changes have you made to your golf course as a result of using the WatchDog® 3250?
The Spectrum® Technologies weather station and pups allow us to make better decisions on how much irrigation to apply to different areas of the golf course. Using the information to improve water management makes for a better golf course.
Another great feature is the SpecConnect™ Cloud Solution app, where I can view weather data from each pup right on my smartphone. If precipitation moves through after I am gone for the day, I can still see exactly what is going on and adjust the irrigation accordingly from home. This is my favorite feature of the Spectrum® Technologies weather station setup.
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