One Aerospace company, in partnership with another aerospace company, had designed a new aircraft to fulfill the requirements of the U.S. Navy VTXTS program back in the 1980 timeframe. The VTXTS program consisted of both a new aircraft and a new training system, that would be used to replace the then current North American T-2 Buckeye. This effort was started in the late 1970s and lasted until shortly before the proposal was submitted. The proposal was then canceled before submission, and the program was later awarded to the McDonnell-Douglas T-45 Goshawk. I never learned why the proposal was withdrawn, but, it may have been because the company couldn't support this effort along with three other major programs going on at the same time, (ATA, ATB, and the ATF).The U.S. Navy may have also suggested that it couldn't afford an all new aircraft, and would instead, be looking for a derivative of an existing aircraft. The end result was exactly that, a derivative of the British Aerospace Hawk.
A tremendous amount of money was spent on the program, with analytical work, water tunnel and wind tunnel tests. However, every time there is a physical move of departments, engineers are told to throw out the old stuff to save room for their new habitat. Models, drawings, photos, and computer data, are subject to a possible discard, as they are considered useless for future work. On one move, I found this water tunnel model of the VTX in a desk drawer. I asked my manager if I could have it, and he said yes. It no longer had any value. It was apparently still being tested, as it had an unfinished fairing on the bottom of the forward fuselage. The resin model comes with the "sting" that the aircraft was mounted on while in the water tunnel. There are no fairings that would normally fit over the intakes to smooth out the flow. The sting attached at the top of the fuselage, so that the model was inverted in the water tunnel. The model is 12 inches long. It is made of both resin, and I assume, aluminum.
The model is still in the shape that I found it. I had thoughts of refinishing it and putting it on a stand, but decided to leave it as is. This auction includes the model, sting, unfinished nose fairing, drawings and slides showing the evolution of the design. Drawings include the inboard profile, section cuts, fold-out 3-views and view graphs.