My 394 is a bear to start when it is hot too. I use the choke to stop it instead of the on/off switch and it will re-start on one pull. Pull the choke, it stops, push the choke back in. Not ideal by any means but it does work for me. It also seems to do better since I switched to non-ethanol gas.
If your saying the non e gas is helping it leads me to believe it is more vapor lock related. I will give the choke stop a shot