For those of us who are driven by a deeper force, mainly men,” A

We moved house in 01 and the whole culdesac is built on a slope. Where the flymo really fell down (particularly the one with the built in collector) was trying to mow the various slopes and contours our garden has.

Really found it to be an issue with the heavier collector flymo we got.

Obviously with it floating you can end up having a job to stop it “sideslipping”, as I believe skiers call it, down your lawn which is one thing wheeled mowers don’t do.

I’d like to share the history of how Flymo moved (mowed?) in to our family:

A few years ago when we had recently moved from an apartment to a house, one of our new neighbours came by and offered us to borrow his lawn mower. We had been busy renovating - installing a new kitchen, new bathroom, new floors, new wallpapers, new felt roof etc - so we simply hadn’t took us the time to buy a lawn mower. Judging from the neat appearance of his garden, watching our helter-skelter front lawn must have been almost painful to him. I graciously accepted his offer and he instantly brought his lawn mower.

It was a Flymo, and before trying one I would never have thought of buying an electric mower myself. But I quickly became in love with it - for a smaller garden, it’s perfect. You can move it in any direction, “eat” longer shrubs by lifting it and cut them from the top, it’s relatively quiet and - on top of it all - quite fun.

A few weeks later, our neighbour happened to drive by on his way home from the hardware store with a brand new lawn mower in the back of his car. Apparently the old Flymo had broken down after long and faithful service. I realized by now I really had to buy my own Flymo, I couldn’t continue borrow his grass cutting facilities - especially not his brand new machine!

But moments later he stands by our door, old Flymo in hand. The new machine hadn’t worked either… very strange… It turned out it was the extention cord that was broken, not the machine! The old Flymo was running just fine if plugged in via another cord!

So, you only have use for one Flymo, and since he now had two and I had none, it became a nice present.

Since then we’ve moved to a house with a bigger garden, but the Flymo is still keeping the grass down. I probably will get a Klippo (another Swedish quality product) next summer. But first, we’ve got some work to do inside the house: install the new kitchen, renovate the bathroom, build a wall, put up a few doors, decorate the first floor… Any neighbor with an extra Klippo is welcome to drop by!

They’re great for small or funny-shaped gardens, because of their zero turning circle, but to use them on much of a slope you pretty much have to stand uphill and swing the mower on the slope below you like a pendulum. This can be a problem if the grass is long; ordinary long grass you can just push the mower into and it’s no big deal, but if you’re slope-swinging the mower long grass makes it hard to get up enough momentum.

Also, every time you let go of the handle and the mower cuts off, it settles to the ground and cuts the grass shorter - this can easily scalp spots on your lawn.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure that hover mowers, by their very nature, blow a lot more clipping out around themselves than do wheeled versions - I had shoes full of clippings after even a small session with the Flymo.

Overall, though, they definitely do not suck. The electric ones are well worth considering if you’ve got a small or awkward shaped lawn; a bigger gas-powered one might well work well on large lawns, too.

http://www.thesynapse.com/flymo/whyflymo.asp

http://www.flymo.co.uk/node513.aspx?cid=307

They kick arse for shorter, even grass as they really do glide over the surface using ground effect, but with an uneven lawn or longer stems the air spills and they are just clumsy cased edgers.

I loved our first one, just because I was able to swing it around one handed (until I swung it over the cable) as a lawn-levelling teen.