I’ve said a few times that I wouldn’t touch the Hawk again. Someone made an interesting looking anti-ship search & destroy mission, though, so I thought I might as well try and get something for my money.
Ground steering was really awful. When I got to the runway the aircraft just stopped as though I had pulled the handbrake on - and that was it, mission over.
Every time I think I’ll give it another chance, it just shows me a pair of Sooty’s ears.
Edit: Don’t know if it’s connected, but before this mission, I tried to fly one with the Huey. Pick up soldiers at green smoke and fly them to battle was the task. When I tried to land on the parking pan, at the green smoke - the helicopter sank straight through the concrete to the rotors, which broke off, then bounced back up to ground level.
Probably worth retrying only if something had changed.
I’ve not noticed any recent patch notes that mentioned the Hawk (maybe textures for PBR), and other than VEAO’s announcement to try to finish the Hawk out of beta, release P-40 post 2.5 and then concentrate on other platforms I think they are just heads-down on the systems rewrite.
They offered P-40 refunds for a while, but those aren’t available now. P-40 is still planned but not a priority until 2.5 comes out.
DCS will no longer be our primary development platform.
That said; we are committed to getting Hawk out of early access and released as soon as possible. This will involve updated PBR cockpit textures, bug fixes for major systems, bugs recorded internally with ED and any found with future DCS patches as ongoing maintenance.
Development of P-40F for DCS will resume but will not take precedence of development over other platforms. We maintain that we do not expect to release P-40F prior to 2.5 and a release schedule will be confirmed when the module is ready for beta.
When P-40F is ready for review in DCS; we will, as previously agreed with TFC arrange an acceptance demonstration with a view of releasing the aircraft to you, the public.
Development work on our other aircraft will no longer continue for DCS.
There had been some updates after I stopped flying it, so it was worth looking. Even so - the last time I flew, it wasn’t as bad as it seems now.
Problem is, at least for those who do fly it, when future updates break things on it, is anyone going to actually fix it?
If not, this is more grounds for wanting refunds. Won’t happen, of course, but this kind of thing highlights the disadvantages of only having one show in town.
I think they realized this, or rather knew that the code they had has to be redone to be less dependent on internal ED API’s. It’s likely it got worse over time because the code was fragile and the platform of DCS World keeps moving. Not wanting to do the P-40 until 2.5 sort of confirms this as well.
In a way, but it also reinforces that having several DCS mod makers to purchase from in an ecosystem is healthier as well. I too am disappointed in the Hawk, one of my favorite real-life aircraft and a UK icon.
I guess this has already been done to death and I didn’t want to restart the old discussions - but it does still grate. I was willing to put up with bugs and/or missing functions, but not even getting off the ground is very disappointing.
I was thinking of when the MiG-21bis project was going pear shaped and how I got several emails from the team, keeping me assured that they were working things out etc (though I must admit I had written it off) and how I never heard a single thing from VEAO or Aviodev. I have more patience with Aviodev because I have a very nice plane from them, that I do fly fairly regularly, when I fancy an evening jaunt around just for the view.
Anyway - enough. Time to bin the Hawk and consider it money lost to an undeserving cause. Had enough of those in the past!
So, being the previously mentioned glutton for punishment, I thought I would look at the Hawk training mission and see if I got stuck in that - just to see if it’s a Hawk or DCS World thing.
Problem was, I couldn’t start up due to issues with HYD 2 and its resetting.
However, I did start the Hawk quick mission where a cold start is practised - and it went okay. HYD2 was still playing up, but I got on top of it. I had pulled forward just a few metres when I had the same “handbrake yank” stopping issue. This time, though, I was able to overcome it by just sitting there at full throttle for a minutes - when the aircraft lurched forwards and I was able to continue.
Taxiing was just as crazy as yesterday - the thing is constantly pulling sharply to the right.
The take-off run was a bit of a nightmare, but I managed to get airborne.
Once up in the air, it was actually a pleasure to fly.
Landing (yes, I was feeling brave) was survived - but it was pulling to the right again - as this screenshot shows, from the amount of pressure I’d had to use on the brakes to keep it on the concrete
