Well these are just my guesses so bear with me:
1: Don't know. I suppose it would have to be outside the system for safety reasons but a bold commander might choose to exit the warp very close to a planet.
2: Since time and space doesn't exist in the warp the concept of speed is irrelevant. However the fluff doesn't allways seem to realize this (and sometimes it just works better from a storytelling perspective) so "normal" warp jumps can take up to a couple of months depending on the distance.
Realspace speed is a different matter. In order to maintain the element of surprise they'd have to be pretty darn fast! If not near light speed then at the very least several 100.000 if not millions km/h. Considering that the speed of light is 299.792.458 m/s ?and the distances even within our own solar system I don't it is completely unreasonable.
3: The Thuunderhawk launch bays are located at the front of the Strike cruiser IIRC. There's a pretty good pic of it in one of tyhe BFG pdf's on the fanatic website. http://www.specialist-games.com/battlef....ike.pdf
The pic depicts a Battle Barge up close but I assume that the Strike cruiser is very similar. Perhaps someone who owns the actual model can verify this.
Cheers!
