I drive a car on road courses, and we call this "seat time"Tigerhaze wrote: You can probably do a passable job after the first 40 hours of operation- it really just takes a lot of practice to get good at the eye/hand coordination you need with the steering levers and loader/blade hydraulics to get good results without a lot of rework and backblading. I now have several hundred hours of seat time in my 2010 and while my results are much better now it still doesn't compare to a seasoned operator.
As for finish work, I don't even like doing it with the crawler. I rough in my grades with the crawler and then finish grade with my Bobcats , my 8N tractor with 3 point angled straight blade, and vibratory roller compactor. Some people don't have those options but it does make for a
100 hours might take a year for me....
Fortunately I think there is quite a bit of rough work to do; grading the road so it is easily passable with passenger vehicles, digging the septic system hole, digging a house cellar hole, etc.