Hi guys, this past Friday we maidened the new ARF PLUS Hawk from Skymaster. All I can say is wow, this jet fly's incredible, very smooth and can do all manouvers on the book. Knife edge flying is a piece of cake...

So it took our builder about 3 weeks to asemble the Hawk, the customer went with a full light system from Flugmodellbau and for power the JF-100 Falcon. No surprises on the building stages, everything went in well and minor modifications where required. I am sure our friend Acrored (Builder) will provide some coments. He did do some modifications to the fel tanks though. We used an old F-18 main tank and modified the intake of the smaller tank. Check the pics...

First flight was by the book, after we tested range checks and other systems it was time to fly.
Apply full power and let the Hawk go, I pulled a bit of elevator and off the ground it went in about 60 meters, very impresive. Just a few trim adjustments and we where ahveing a lot of fun. Tested some aerobatics, great... Tested knife flying with low rate, PERFECT... This jet is so stable. Most flying was done with a bit more than half the power. The Falcon gives more than enough power for this jet.

Ok it was time to test slow flight capabilities so I went up, cut to idle and let the hawk slow down until stall. I was almoust stopped on the air, impressive how slow this jet can go. The right wing droped and I applyed power which came instantly and I was flying straight and level in no time.

Next tested the air brake, we opened it and it was very obious how the Hawk started to loose speed fast. No pitch changes with this manouver.

Next test, the infamous let's lower the flaps test.... So I cut the power to 1/3 and lower the gear, then lower the flaps slowly all the way down. The Hawk pitched down a bit but not much, but it was loosing speed very fast. I applyed power again and I was flying straight and level with a bit of up elevator. (We added a mix for later flight to fix this)
I took a couple of turns to see how it handled and then the landing aproach. No problem here, a slight high AOA on finals and the hawk landed smoothly on the runway. It was completelly stopped after about 40 meters.

So in general the jet fly's great, very fun and easy to fly. The customer is very happy with it.

On Sunday we went flying again, this time the customer flew the jet, on landing he came very high and pitch the jet down about 30 degrees. With full flaps the jet was slowing down quite fast but from his angle it was not really noticeable. When he was about to reach the runway he wanted to pull up but the Hawk was going so slow that he was unable to do it completelly. He was very lucky that he only got some gear damage and a few scratches, the Hawk will be flying again next weekend.

Unfortunatelly our tipycal camera man was not there so we got no video but I promise to get some new video next weekend. I do have some pics though.

Michel