I am actually in Scotland and we bale a lot of straw behind our Axial Flow. The main reason I didnt buy a combination hood was the fact that it seperates the straw from the chaff when you are windrowing it! Using the standard factory setup most of the chaff is mixed with the straw and you bale it at the same time. We dont find this a disadvantage when we are using the straw, but it probably makes the swath less weatherproof as it is very dense and does not dry out when it rains. Some older balers (particularly JD 500 series)dont feed well because of the short strw length and the chaff, but we have used NH and Welger round balers successfully.