I recently acquired what was left of an old B-907A Crusader-class Heavy Fighter from a scrap dealer down at Invergordon. The ship had long since been stripped of every useful or valuable part. My nephew and I have been working on rebuilding it to a spaceworthy state and upgrading it to a modern standard of performance. Some of the more specialized original parts have been proving hard to find due to a lack of a market for them. The BAF has upgraded all their Crusaders to Templar-class or had them recycled entirely. Any of the handful of Crusaders that were in civilian service were either repurchased by the BAF or replaced by their owners due to obsolescence.
Which brings me to the reason for my call. I'm looking for a complete cockpit avionics package. Part of the Templar upgrade program involved replacing a large portion of the avionics with new models, which won't work in the Crusader without extensive modification. Adapting the equivalent parts from another ship would require even more modification. The BAF is unlikely to sell parts for a state-of-the-art military fighter during wartime, and I'd like to keep the cockpit as close to the original as possible.
If you could put me in touch with someone who can provide the required parts, I'd very much appreciate it.
.:Incoming Transmission:.
.:Comm ID: Rick Tiltman:.
.:Topic: On a Crusade?:.
First things first, my apologies for the delay, I am not entirely sure how nobody from the Congress has seen or seen it fit to get back to you on this until now, regardless I'll take over.
Need some parts to the old Crusaders eh? That's quite the little side project there but I must say I am impressed and proud in your interest in preserving its historical accuracy. Unfortunately, in terms of "classic" ship designs if you will, we generally meltdown what is unrecognizable. What is, we sell of to the University of Cambridge for their History of War Museum on Planet Cambridge. While I wouldn't put money on those bookworms actually separating them selves from any of the parts for a complete ship it is possible they may have a incomplete model that you might be able to pick up on the relative cheap.
Other then that I am afraid I cannot help you, unfortunately with the war most anything half intact was picked clean and refurbished for use where needed by the BAF, and what wasn't has already long been melted down in smelters. Good luck in your mission however and I would love to come see the finished piece when your done.
Mr. Tiltman, thank you for getting back to me. It's disappointing, but I'm not at all surprised at the scarcity of Crusader parts. Thanks to the realities of war and the thoroughness of the Templar upgrade program, that's pretty much what I expected. I had inquired about the parts with the Bretonian Government already, to no avail.
Fortunately, I was able to find three reasonably intact Crusader wrecks in Tau-31 as yet unlooted, left over from the early days of the Tau war. I had just enough time to pull the parts I needed before being ran off by Gallic patrols. Between the three wrecks, I managed to cobble together enough of the more Crusader-specific parts to assemble a proper cockpit avionics set. What I couldn't find intact was reasonably easy to adapt from commonly available civilian parts.
This little project of mine has, understandably, drawn a lot of interest. Once it's spaceworthy, you're welcome to come up to Canberra and see it for yourself.