Well, if you were able to adjust your CG so that your Hawk would not climb at high power settings that is nice. I have my CG right where I want it and I have a simple mix which adds a tiny bit of down elevator from 50 to 100% throttle. I don't think that has much effect on having the nose drop when cutting power and flaring to land. I hear what you are saying about heading hold (HH) as my Mephisto is the first to have that in my fleet and it does fly a bit different. HH requires you to get off the sticks once you have achieved the correct attitude so that it can do its thing. Like gyros in general I use as little as possible to get the positive stabilizing effect I want but not have a robotic flying airplane. With the CORE and Mercury I will be able to vary the effect in different flight modes. Should be interesting to play with although I rarely mess around with that stuff! Until the Mephisto I was "no way " on HH.
I had a discussion about gyros with a very talented pilot (one of the best there is at prop/turbine pattern flying and the Mephisto in all modes) while setting up my Mephisto. We talked about the pros and cons of HH and the iGyro vs the Cortex. He told me one of the "secrets" of the Cortex popularity was that it incorporates small amounts of HH automatically, whereas the iGyro does not. So by adding a bit of HH to the iGyro in my Royal I am getting closer to the feel of the "CARF recommended Cortex" for that model. Anywhoo, that has sparked my interest in HH.

Thanks for the pictures of the Red Arrows Hawk!