Impact Hammer Soil Tester with GPS 2.25kg – Location-Tagged Surface Hardness Testing for Winter Sports, Cricket & Equestrian (Bluetooth)

A 2.25kg impact hammer soil tester with fitted GPS for measuring the hardness or shock absorption properties of many sports surfaces. The integral GPS helps you ensure the spatial consistency of pitches and other surfaces, identify problem areas and take repeated measurements in the same places over time. It is particularly suitable for winter sports pitches, cricket pitches and equestrian surfaces.

Please note: there can be a long lead time on this product.

Uses

The impact hammer helps you prepare quality, consistent playing surfaces in many sports, and supports decisions on playing surface quality and safety, as well as turfgrass health. It is simple to use and gives straightforward, unbiased results.

• Cricket: the test is a good predictor of both bounce and pace, making it a useful addition for an unbiased assessment of playing surface quality.
• Winter sports: where hard ground brings a risk of injury, the unbiased results help with safety decisions. The results have been shown to correlate closely with head injury severity indexes, and the test can also indicate the shock absorption and ball rebound qualities of the playing surface.

Use on different sports surfaces+

+ It can also be used on other types of surface, e.g. tennis courts, bowling greens and equestrian surfaces. *Deceleration due to gravity.

It can also be used to assess surface consistency through the year and across different areas of a surface, which needs multiple measurements across the pitch to calculate the degree of variation between them. With the fitted GPS, each measurement is linked to its location, making it easier to identify areas that need treatment and to make sure hardness assessments over time are taken in the same spots, for more reproducible and robust results.

Suggested number of measurements to test for consistency

Operation

Operating principle: the tester consists of a 2.25kg compaction hammer working inside a vertical guide tube. When released, the hammer falls through the tube and strikes the surface under test, decelerating at a rate set by the stiffness of the material where it hits. The readout shows the hardness in units of gravities (G); harder surfaces give a higher G reading.

Design: a very rugged design suitable for prolonged use in damp, dirty and harsh site conditions. The readout unit is made from high strength alloy that has been proven to last for decades. It is a compact, reliable instrument, comes with a transit and storage case, and takes automatic GPS measurements to give latitude and longitude location information.

Test procedure: testing is quick and straightforward. Stand the guide tube vertically on the surface to be tested; the digital readout sits on the guide tube during testing, so there is no need to hold it. Raise the hammer to the desired height and let it fall freely. Repeat three times and record the reading from the third drop as the measurement. Test data is stored in the instrument and can be downloaded wirelessly to a computer by Bluetooth.

Features