Thanks guys. I just got back from the job and things didn't go too bad. I learned a couple of things today. 1) A ditch witch can't cross the ditch it just dug (at least not at anything less than 90 degrees if that). 2) because of 1, you really should plan on starting at one point and going all the way to the other point. Unfortunately, both ends of my run were in kind of tight places. So I thought I'd be clever and start at both ends and end in the middle. WRONG. Luckily I realized what a horrible mistake I was about to make before I made it. If I had connected the two trenches, the machine would have been stuck. As it was I kind of hacked away at the two trenches in the middle enough to soften up the dirt. I have to go back out with a post hole digger tomorrow to clean up.
Other than that, it went pretty well. I lowered the stinger and let it dig a bit, then moved the machine forward. If it hit a rock, I raised the stinger a bit, went past the rock then lowered it again. That thing can pull up some pretty darn big rocks! That worked well enough until I dug right next to a couple of really large rocks. They bound the stinger so I couldn't get past them so I started a parallel ditch. That was kind of a mistake too. Couldn't really do a nice job of connecting them because of that "machine won't float on air" thing. In retrospect, I should have just raised the stinger and positioned it a couple of inches away from the rock and let it back down.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about getting the rear tire too close to the trench and feeling the machine sinking because of the weight of the stinger. Not a good feeling. Again, I was lucky enough to stop and reverse direction quick enough to get out.
The other thing I noticed after I'd gone 50 feet, the screw to move the dirt was on the right side. Most, but not all, of the dirt was ending up on that side. I was trenching along a very mild slope and should have planned to drop the spoil on the downhill side so less fell back into the trench. Oh well, maybe next time.
