Hello and good afternoon jcummins,
Please visit the Iowa Farm Equipment web page so that you can see their line of Peruzzo flail mowers so that you can better understand how they work.
The offset flail mower is moved one or two positions to the right or left depending on the manufacturer to allow the flail mower to mower wider to the left or right depending on what the mounting frame position is and there is no hydraulic cylinder in use to shift the flail mower.
The side shifting flail mower has one cylinder and the boom mounted orchard and vineyard flail mower has two hydraulic cylinders.
The inner cylinder moves the outer boom in and out and the outer cylinder controls the tilt function which can drop to 45 degrees below horizontal and it can also be retracted to the vertical position to allow the operator to replace the hammer flails or mow along brush, orchard and weed tree lines to keep the weed trees back from the lane or to trim tall long hedges in two passes.