Talos,
That makes perfect sense, considering that the Starfighter was originally going to be the Starhound Viper. I would love to see that thing "Colonialized" If you need a reference, I believe that Alan Sinclair has detailed CAD drawings of all the varients used in the Buck Rogers series, I'll see if I can find his site and attach it for you. As for the Mk VII modifications, I just recovered from a major hard drive crash and I'll zap them out to you when I locate them (hopefully today) sorry for the delay.
Found it:
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/wiza...ght/index.html