There are many factors and issues to consider from your question. Your terrain is number 1.

There ia a major issue also between the different types of strip till machines on the market. We have a local N IL coop who bought a shank type machine last fall and did a LOT of custom fall strip till in bean stubble mostly but some corn.

One of the managers was a speaker at the northern session of a series of tillage meetings around the state of IL. He was very up front about the dramatic difference they saw between where the planter was "ON" the fall knife slot vs "OFF" the slot. The stands were and are dramatically different - better where the planter was "on the strip". And since customers had a wide variety of planters and planter attachments, the speaker said it was independent of the planter, it seemed to be directly related to the lateral location of the seed relative to the fall-made strip till "slot".

You could not make up for being off of the strip with planter attachments. where you wer off of the strip you were essentially "no tilling" and in addition to losing the benefits of the strip you lose the benefits of the indexing to the fertilizer also.

On the 24 row - whether or not a 24 row swtrip till unit is even possible depends a lot on whose strip till system you are talking about. I am going to by pass that discussion right now.

We have several customers who are successfully strip tilling 24R30 with Bauer or Kinze bars and our Pluribus units.

However we have a very thoughful customer, who needed 24 row capaqcity in the spring but chose to go with a second 12R30 strip till bar - he now runs two 12R30 strip till bars with tractors setup on 120" singles, along with a 12R30 cornhead on his combine. He uses Autofarm RTK on both tractors. Frankly right now I am not sure if he is at 1 24R30 planter or 2 12R30s planter but neither of them has fertilizer on them - just Trashwheels and I believe Curvetines. 

The 12R30 with the strip till, fertilizer and combine tires ALL runing down the same two tracks seems to give you the minimum compaction percent. This customer has built some absolutely gorgeous soils in his continuous corn system. He is in rolling ground.

He does use to 3-point mounted strip till bars (our units on Moore-Built 12R vertical fold HD planter bars) and on his latest unit pulls a Montag dry air cart. He does not seem to have a problems staying on our Dawn 8-10" wide strip. All of his strips are done in the spring.

One more item: I was with a number of custmers this spring, like the one I mention above, who use rtk very well. I was also with a couple customers who have spent many thousands of dollars on rtk and other equipment then have operators who really don't understand the system.

In one case, I am in the field taking video of a customers hired man running the planter supposedly planting on some very nice strips made the day before in corn on corn. As the planter approached on this flat ground, I could not believe the operator was a full 15" off of the strip!

We go to all the trouble to make these strips and he ends up running tires on these beautiful strips and running the planter right down the top of untouched 200 bu bt cornstalks!!  I asked him why he was off of the strip and he replied something about how they had messed up the AB line and he couldn't find it, etc, etc.....

Everyone involved would have been better off if he had just shut off the thousands of dollars worth of electronics and comuter screens and looked out the window and put one tire on the old row of stalks!  This is often the type of situation where we hear "strip till doesn't work" then they go out and get the chisel and a disc. A guy can then almost be asleep in the cab....

Matt, I share your enthusiasm for strip till. We have many customers who report that their spring strip tilled corn looks very good at this point. Especially in the growing dry areas, the moisture saved by strip till is a big help right now for some customers.

A lot of points to consider in your decision. I would look at the overall system, compaction, manpower, timing, etc in addition to guidance and number of rows,... Best of Luck to you.

Jim at Dawn