I'm currently building a model of the Have Blue XST. I've already conducted an extensive net search as well as a fair amount of printed literature. I'm looking for additional, publicly available information that may not be in circulation.

Specifically, I'm looking for:

Photos/documents/schematics of the landing gear and bay. Sources state they're from an A-10.

Photos/document/schematics of the cockpit. Sources state the seat and instruments are from a F-5.

Photographs of the rear/exhaust of the plane. I've got the one taken from an 8 o'clock position.

Camouflage pattern details for the underbelly of the aircraft. I've seen those listed at JPS model and published by Squadron Signal and Airtime Publishing. No underbelly schematic is published, and I've heard the scheme is actually of mixed paints of upwards of 12 different varying shades.

Any idea on how to get Lockheed to talk to you, or how to file a Freedom of Information Act?

FIOA requests are a government thing so Lockheed would just ignore them. My suggestion is to go to the AF web site and they have a page of FOIA and how and were to send them and were the reading rooms are.

There are not alot of pictures of the HaveBlue AC. Both were destroyed during testing. And Inflight testing pictures are really rare.

Th Ben Rich Skunk Works book does state that they used alot of off the shelf parts for it. The flight controlls were modified from the F-16. I know from my reading that the breaks were really bad. They had to put fans on them after landings and were replace with f-15 breaks.

Thank you, I appreciate your taking an interest in this.

Do you have a link to the AF website?

When you say flight controls from an F-16, do mean just the fly-by-wire system, or also the controls such as a side-stick and throttle?

It's little modifications like what kinds of changes from the A-10 break system to an F-15 break system occured and how they affected the appearance, etc., that I'm interested in.

I still need to pick up a lot of those books, and thank you for the additional literature sources, it really helps.

I've been harassing the f-117A.com webmaster for some time, now. lol He's been very helpful.

[edit on 6-8-2004 by Horrido]

I ran across a book about Lockheed Martin - it gave some good pictures..do a search on amazon for Lockheed Martin and Skunkworks.

=-Rich