Justflight Hawker 800 Fsx
Beatris Ninh
When something looks right, then it is right. A phrase often used to describe the Spitfire, and perhaps apt for that aircraft. Personally, I think it can be applied to the Hawker Hunter too, a sleek, beautiful aircraft with performance, in its day, to match. Can Just Flight's new Hawker Hunter measure up to the real thing? This review will make that judgement, but first, let's have a look at that aircraft and its impressive record.
At the end of World War II and the advent of the Jet engine, aircraft manufacturers were keen to produce a fast fighter to replace the RAFs Gloster Meteors. They wanted to push the boundaries of what was known about approaching the speed of sound, and the designers at Hawker came up with the single engine, swept wing Hawker Hunter.
A relatively conventional design, the P.1067 met the 1948 specifications set down by the British Ministry of Supply for a single seater day fighter with swept wings, capable of Mach 0.94 and powered by a Rolls-Royce A.J. axial-flow turbojet engine. So, the P.1067 prototype was designed and built, taking a step forward with a single jet tail pipe and with 35 degree swept back wings. The Rolls-Royce. A.J.axial-flow turbojet engine would become known as the Avon, and the P.1067 would become the Hunter.
In 1953, the Hunter broke the world air speed at Littlehampton on the south coast of England, a record that would last but three weeks, and would fall to a Supermarine Swift, an aircraft that would be out of service in 1961, many years before the Hunter. Hawker had designed a great looking aircraft which would become a global sensation and would serve with the RAF for longer than any other aircraft, and that is a record that still remains today.
The Hunter F6, as the designation hints at, was the sixth production version of the Hunter, and was first flown on 11th October 1955. It was fitted with an uprated Rolls-Royce Avon 293 turbojet engine, a revised wing with a 52 degree sweep and a "dogtooth" leading edge and with four hardpoints. This aircraft was to be capable of Mach 1.2 in level flight and so was to be a fully supersonic aircraft. 384 of these single-seat clear-weather interceptor fighter were built, and they were the most ubiquitous version.
The Hunter FGA.9 was a ground attack aircraft, all examples of which were produced from modified F6 airframes. It had a strengthened wing, could carry 230 gallon inboard drop tanks, and a drag chute. There were other alterations as well, designed to improve the aircrafts capability as a ground attack version. There were 128 of these aircraft conversions.
The Hawker Hunter saw service with both the RAF and the Royal Navy, as well as twenty two other countries armed forces. The original prototype first flew on 20th July 1951, and very many examples of the aircraft are still flying today, over 65 years later, although not with any armed forces. The last military operated Hawker Hunters were retired from active service in the Swiss Airforce in 2016. Some Hunters remain in service as target towing aircraft etc. with various organisations such as the Airborne Tactical Advantage Company in the USA. ATAC operates Mk-58 Hawker Hunters on military tactical training roles for the U. S. Navy, Air Force and Air National Guard.
The Hunter was sold widely across the globe. The 22 countries which have operated Hunters purchased them directly from Hawkers, or indirectly from aircraft leaving the service of other nations. With about 60 different home and export marks and about 2000 airframes built, the Hunter has been and continues to be a much loved aircraft all over the world.
The F.6 main armament was four nose mounted 30mm Aden Cannons with side pods to collect the empty shell cases prevent them from becoming ingested into the engine. These were nicknamed "Sabrinas" after a popular and well-endowed glamour model of the time. The FGA.9 could also carry under wing bombs and rockets.
The Just Flight's Hawker Hunter is currently available from Just Flight as a download only product. It is priced at 24.99, or the equivalent on currency cross rates. The installation process requires you to log in to your Just Flight account to verify the product and then the installation process is intuitive and seamless. The single downloaded file allows you to install this model into Flight Simulator X (Acceleration, Gold or SP2 required), FSX: Steam Edition or P3D v3/v2/v1.
There is a professional quality paint kit available for download from Just Flights web site, its zip file is 331MB in size, and is a collection of layered PDF images which allows for the repaint of the Hunters airframe, its droppable objects, and its canopy. I can see that this will be very useful given the Hunters wide international use.
Outside the installed Hunter and FSX, there is a small utility which allows the user to choose between realistic castor nose wheel with differential breaking as steering, or a steerable nose wheel. Inside the sim, there are switches which allow you to change various aspects of the aircraft. There is a ground power switch which, when turned on, causes the battery cart to appear and allows the aircraft to be started with external power, there is a switch to show or hide the pilot and a third switch to show or hide the chocks, tapes and engine covers.
The F.6 was designed as fighter/interceptor and entered RAF service in that role. The FGA.9's were not made from scratch but were all converted F.6 aircraft. The external differences are minimal, however, noticeable on the FGA.9's tail pipe, there is a pod and fairing over the top of the rearmost section of the tail pipe. This houses a braking parachute that is deployed on landing to slow down the aircraft. The F.6 and other F.6 derivatives had no such fairing or pod.
The Hunter's tail pipe is relatively long, and there is no afterburner. The glow of the engine is deep within the fuselage, and is an effect that is well modelled on this model. The FGA.9's parachute pod is animated, and the deployment of its breaking parachute is reproduced well.
Having displayed the tail differences between the F.6 and the FGA.9 above, note the detail on both the external, and internal tetures on the aircraft. This is typical of the attention that has been paid to the rendering of the aircraft. The level of detail is just as good on the Black Arrows aircraft, however its sleek glossy black finish makes it harder to pick out in the screen shot.
You can see from the picture above, and from the screenshot in the animations and special effects section of this review, the breaking parachute deployment is very well modelled, and even includes the drogue chute behind the main parachute. Below is a close up of the pilot and cockpit. Note the superb detail on the ejector seat.
More detail is hidden in the depths of the aircraft, when engine isn't running, the detail of the compressor fan is visible. When the engine is running, the blades appear to turn and blur. In fact, there is detail wherever you look, the inside of the undercarriage wells are well detailed, as are vents, hydraulics, and riveting.
Try to find the definitive Hunter cockpit, and I guarantee that you won't be able to. Hunters were in service so long that cockpits were tinkered with, added to, rearranged and personalised to such an extent that after that all that time in service, you would be hard pressed to find two alike.
Below left is a typical "real life" cockpit, and below right is that of the Hunter F.6 from the flight sim model. As you can see from the screenshots below, there is a very strong correlation between the two. I am happy that the Just Flight Hunter is a highly accurate reproduction of the real cockpit.
The cockpit is well presented with very fine detail on every aspect. Most, but not all, switches work, both in terms of actual switch function, and the systems they operate. I have a couple of niggles with the switches - I couldn't get the flaps switch to work with my mouse no matter how I tried. However, it correctly mirrored an action from keyboard or from a mapped command to joystick button perfectly, so the issue was with the switch operation via mouse click. Also, I had a problem with the switch that removes the pilot. This worked intermittently, sometimes it would remove the pilot but most times it didn't work. Another issue I had was with the air brakes, again the switch didn't appear to work. However, this issue was different, as although clicking on the switch bought no animated response and no change in the tool tip which constantly read "Air Brake (shut)", despite this appearance of inaction, the air brake did deploy. Having no change in the switch position, or the fact that the tool tip gave no reliable information on the true air brake status, was not helpful at all.
Realistic dependencies exist within the switched functions, as an example, the start button cannot be used until its guard us flipped up. There is also a choice of cockpit lighting, normal panel lighting and green UV lighting, which provides a softer greenish light to the cockpit, less intrusive than standard lighting.
A 2D popup panel is supplied for payload selection. The choice of clean, external tanks, bombs (FGA.9 only), and rockets is selectable via a rotary switch, and there is also a simple switch which enables the choice between a cold & dark or a ready to fly. The 2D popup selector panel is styled in the same way as the main cockpit and is a great way to implement this sort of thing, but would be better if it were also accessible from the cockpit in the same way as, say, the show/hide pilot switch, but is, instead, available from the menu bar.
There are two basic models included in this package, the F.6 and the FGA.9. The F.6 was built for the RAF, but was sold overseas with slightly different specifications as requested by the customer under different marks. Some examples are: the Indian Air Force bought 160 Mk.56 aircraft, essentially F.6 aircraft but with a slightly different Indian specification. The Swiss Air Force bought 100 Mk.58 aircraft, all based around the RAF's F.6 aircraft, 12 of which were actually conversions from ex-RAF F.6 aircraft. The Royal Saudi Air Force purchased four F.60 aircraft that were all converted F.6 aircraft.
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