Appreciate all the replies. I was playing with it tonight and tried all sorts of toplink adjustments relative to the mowing height to make sure things were properly set up. I'm pretty confident that they are. Then I tried mowing two areas:
1) old pasture, hard packed dirt, weeds and grass - no problems with tailwheel scalping, except in a few spots that are mostly bare
2) Grass field planted about 8 weeks ago, soil had been chiseled and disced before planting, then dragged with a chain harrow after planting. Still getting lots of scalping - nearly constant, in fact, and the tailwheel is practically working as a mini-disc! No good. I should mention that we've had no rain in about 10 days, that this soil is sandy loam, and that despite the happy grass the soil it's in is fairly loose and fluffy still.
I came up with the idea to shorten the toplink until I could mow at a reasonable height (mostly to hit weeds) with the tailwheel completely off the ground. Sounds kludgy, but it seemed to work pretty well. I did about an acre this way with no scalping.
I think I have it setup right (with the toplink longer for normal mowing with the wheel on the ground) - I think the problem is really soft dirt + the older style tailwheel that is too narrow for the weight put on it. I think a laminated wider wheel would be better, though I don't know if it would completely solve the problem. Comments?
