STEVE S. - I've sharpened my blades till they were sharp enough to shave with, and it's just not in the geometry of a NINE inch long blade to mow well. Best shortest description I can make is the cutting edge makes a "glancing blow" to the blades of grass. Which really doesn't help with the outer blades trying to cut the grass the front wheels just ran over.
My 38" deck is not the cast end version, it's the bottom version in the post Charlie made at 9:19 PM Monday. I've made modifications to my 38 inch deck, to make it mow/trim closer on the left end, and trimmed the discharge end off an inch or two, but still not enough to trim with IMO. The mower lifts the grass to cut better, plus distributes the clippings as well as my 50C. Plus it has the spherical gauge wheels the newer decks use on it. Almost impossible to make it scalp.
Depending where I'm at in my yard, I spend as much time looking behind me to make sure the mower is doing a nice job as I do looking ahead. And changing mowing patterns every time I mow makes a HUGE difference in the way the yard looks when I'm done mowing.
I've got my mowing time down to about four hours with the 982 & 50C, been making some trimming nightmares go away. With the 72 & 38 inch deck it still takes over 5, normally six hours. The 72 & 38" deck fit some places I don't even try to go with the 982 & 50C.
I had ONE mowing this whole past summer where I had to start mowing with wet grass from heavy dew. The weather-guesser said we'd get rain at 2 PM, so I started mowing around 10:30 AM. It was about NOON before the grass was dry enough to mow decent, and of course the rain NEVER came till well after dark.
I read a lawn care article years ago that mowing in the afternoon, or after dark is less stressful on the grass plants. Mowing wet grass in the early part of the day is about the worst thing you can do to the grass, with the possible exception of mowing WAY too short during a drought. I do cheat a little on the recommendation to only cut the top 1/3rd of the grass off. Some of my yard grows really fast, other parts barely grow at all, so I may cut half the length of the grass in some areas, but by the time I get to the back yard, I can hardly tell where I've mowed and where I haven't.