T-16 Skyhopper
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The T-16 Skyhopper is a fictitious vehicle from the Star Wars universe.
The vehicle was designed by the Incom Corporation as a multi-purpose utility and pleasure airspeeder. Due to the fact that its cockpit and controls are laid out very similarly to the legendary *T-65 X-wing, many X-wing pilots first learned their skills in a Skyhopper. Still, the Skyhopper has no weapon systems. The cockpit and engines are located in the center of its characteristic trihedral wings. Even though the Skyhopper comes without any weapon systems, Incom develops various standard upgrades that makes the T-16 a suitable vehicle for a wide variety of duties on several worlds across the galaxy.
The key to the skyhopper's high-altitude performance lies in its combination of efficient repulsorlift engines and a powerful ion engine for thrust. This makes for speeds of more than 1,000 kilometers per hour, with a max altitude of about 300 kilometers. To compensate for the high altitudes, the cockpit is pressurized. Presumably, the craft's engine can't easily push it to or past escape velocity, since 300 km is an altitude normally associated with low orbit over an Earth-like planet.
Luke Skywalker and Jek Porkins are two of many famous Rebel Pilots who learned to fly a Skyhopper in their youth. In fact, early in his life on Tatooine, Luke was known to associate with a group of youth T-16 racers in Anchorhead, such as Laze “Fixer” Loneozner, Deak, and Camie.
In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Luke is seen playing with a toy model of a skyhopper. And in the background of the Wide-Screen version you can see Luke's T-16 in the same scene.
In the 2004 DVD edition of Return Of The Jedi, a skyhopper is shown flying above Mos Eisley during the Tatooine celebration scene. In the aforementioned film, the "T-16" (no other name given) was mentioned in passing when during the Death Star briefing scene he mentions to Wedge Antilles (after the latter expresses his doubt about hitting the DS's 2 m-wide thermal exhaust port) that he "used to bull's-eye wamp rats in my T-16 back home", saying that they (the wamp rats) were no bigger than 2 m. Most of the above information on the vehicle and it's uses was taken from the Star Wars Expanded Universe as well as the official website.
