about JF and their failed Hawk

I fly with the VRA in DCS, and I can tell you the only reason the real Reds use the boards in level flight is so they can use a higher throttle setting to increase the density of the smoke nothing to do with stability.

Hopefully the update will be launching later. Not long too wait now.

Sorry that you are not happy with the hawk.
I have just purchased, downloaded, had a test flight. And I am delighted with the performance of this aircraft. Its early days yet, but I am impressed, its a pleasure and a challenge to fly.
Yet another gem from JF !

Thanks MJ and Paul for the replies. I will be testing the hawk on various settings to see if I can improve things.

Dino's T45 is excellent for freeware, it has very good documentation and it handles very well, but I can't say how realistic it is. The cockpit is, of course, very different and the start up procedure is much simplified. At the current state of play I much prefer the T45, but I am sure that a properly working JF Hawk would be better, as payware should be.
I suspect that the T45 is a bit too easy to fly and the ideal flight performance would lie somewhere between the two.

Pete please check that your FSX is NOT running in compatabilty mode, that was the cure for my poor frame rates.

Thanks Slopey. Yes I realise the CPU is not the best. At work I have a FX6300 with an Asrock motherboard with a 970 chipset. That seems to run Photoshop faster than this one at home. So I think I have some tweaking to do on the Gigabyte motherboard. Hopefully one day a new Flight Simulator will come out that will take full advatage of multi core processors. I have been experimenting with affinity settings and certainly switching FSX from core 0 to other cores helps.
The Hawk will just have to stay grounded for the time being. Back to whizzing around the skies in the good old F104!

This is my first post having just joined the forum because of the problems with the Hawk.

I looked forward to the release of the Hawk as it looked in the development stage to be a really excellent aeroplane. The aircraft itself is a marvel and full credit to the JF team for producing an aeroplane as close to the real thing as possible.

So when it was released I took a chance and purchased it, although I realised that my computer was not really up to the spec required. Unfortunately the frame rates were very low.

So I have just spent over £400 upgrading hardware, Gigabyte 990X, AMD FX8370E Black Edition, Sapphire Radeon RX470 4GB. I run FSX on its own 128gb SSD drive. I have tried various fixes to increase frame rates but to no avail. The hawk on my system remains unplayable.

I have the JF Lightning F6, Canberra PR9, Aerosoft Lightning X and F6, also their F16. Plus the SSW wonderful F104S and G. They all have their very different flight characteristics, with the F104 particularly challenging at low speed. However they all have one thing in common, good frame rates.

Where the problem with the Hawk as to the low frame rates exists I have yet to discover. I fully understand that the JF recommended spec is I5 3.2ghz and that my FX8370e is not on a par with the I5, but not all of us can afford the Intel route. So it seems those of us who cannot afford an I7 based computer in the future will not be able to purchase a Just Flight product because our machines will not be powerful enough. Not sure that makes good commercial sense. Surely it is possible to sacrifice some aesthetic features for better frame rates.

At the low frame rates I get it is impossible to give a really good appraisal as to the flight dynamics. To me however it does not feel correct and needs attention, but I agree with the comment above about it being tested by a real Hawk pilot. Hopefully improvements will come with a service pack issue, together with (please JF) an improvement on the frame rates.

As regards the comments above about the airbrake. As far as I am aware the Red Arrows fly at times with the airbrake extended so as to maintain a higher throttle setting. There is therefore an instant power increase when the airbrake retracts instead of waiting for the engine to increase rpm for more thrust.

Ok I'm not a Hawk pilot
I'm not Evan a fast jet pilot
But I have held a private pilots licence for more than 10 years. All aircraft (except fly by wire fighters) are designed to be inherently stable. That is that if trimmed for climb cruise or descent they will stay on flight path and wings level with minimum input from the pilot until weather conditions change that.
The Hawk is an advanced trainer. To be a good trainer it would need to be a stable platform. It's called an advanced trainer not becouse it is dificult to fly. But becouse it has more systems for the trainee pilot to manage. It's faster so reaction time and decision time is less. And it's used to teach acrobatics maneuvers and combat maneuvers. But if the trainee pilot was constantly fighting the controls he could never master all the other things.
The suggestion that air brakes stabilize the aircraft is crazy and shows a complete lack of knowledge of basic flight. Air brakes have one use and one use only. To create more drag.
Often used on approach becouse aircraft like the Hawk are slippery and don't like to slow down. To make speed more manageable on approach if you put out the speed brakes the aircraft will slow down almost instantly, when the throttle is reduced instead of over many minutes if the air brakes where not out.
If you have seen aerobatic teams using air brakes when flying in formation it's for the very same reason. To create drag and there for more control over speed when trying to stay lined up with another aircraft.
The basic fact is. In still air properly balanced and trimmed any aircraft should fly reasonably strieght for a short period of time. Not go from +5000 fpm to -5000fpm.
Why don't you load up FSX take off in the JF Hawk climb to 19000 feet and try to travel in a streight line within + or - 100 feet of altitude for ir 30 minutes. If you was flying in IFR with ATC that's what is required. In the hawk you would struggle to stay within 2000 feet of your assigned altitude and you would have no ability to do any other tasks in the cockpit such as change freq or look at your charts.
I once tried to tune the nav radio in the JF Hawk in level flight AT 10,000 feet in level cruise trimmed as best I could. It only took seconds to tune the freq. when I looked up all I could see was ocean. I was in a full Jose five heading for the sea. I only just managed to pull up. This aircraft has an awful flight model and is no way accurate.

I'm sorry I have seen people claiming that this flight model is accurate. Total hog wash in my opinion, I can hardly believe a true Hawk pilot uses airbrake sin standard flight to stabilise the hawk!

The FDE was rushed and now they are trying to correct it, but us punters have parted cash for a pretty looking part finished sim.

I look forward to an update, but I'm already turning blue in the face and I'm not sure I can hold my breath much longer!