Charlie, he was travelling fairly fast with the combine but not quite as fast as it looks in the video. Somehow in the transfer from videotape to computer it seems to have made it look faster.
Windrowed crops were the rule back in 87 but for quite a while now we have been straight cutting most cereal crops. Its gone in cycles. Used to be everyone straight cut wheat in the fifties, then the swather came in to use as it helped weedy uneven crops to ripen when laid in the swath. With better weed control we found that straight cutting worked again so now the swathers mostly just cut canola and flax.