T-16 skyhopper

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Size:
  10.4 meters tall

• Type:
  Tropospheric craft

• Manufacturer:
  Incom Corporation

• 

From the Movies

Ask a young Tatooine moisture farmer what makes life on the Outer Rim planet the most difficult, and they're likely to name boredom alongside the heat, aridity, and fierce desert creatures. For a group of youngsters growing up near Anchorhead, escape came in the trihedral form of the Incom T-16 skyhopper.

The tropospheric pleasure and utility craft has instrumentation and controls laid out in a similar manner as the X-wing starfighter. As a result, pilots who have trained on the T-16 have little trouble when behind the stick of a T-65. The cockpit and engine cluster are located in the center of trihedral wings.

Luke Skywalker burned out the instrumentation on his two-man skyhopper after a foolhardy stunt in Beggar's Canyon. Though he couldn't fly his beloved craft, he did play with a model skyhopper to pass the time.

From the Expanded Universe

The key to the skyhopper's high-altitude performance is the marriage of efficient twin DCJ-45 repulsorlift engines for lift and an Incom E-16/x ion engine for thrust. These deliver the airspeeder's impressive speeds in excess of 1,000 kilometers per hour, and its flight ceiling of 300 kilometers. Its internal cabin is pressurized to withstand such sub-orbital travel.

The standard skyhopper bears no weapons, but Incom makes available a number of standard upgrade packages that has seen the T-16 pressed into security, escort and policing duties on several worlds.

Behind the Scenes

Although plans were drawn up to build a full-size skyhopper for A New Hope, budgetary constraints resulted in only a partial construct built for the Lars homestead garage sequences. Luke's damaged airspeeder can be glimpsed in the opening behind the droid oil bath. Also, actor Mark Hamill plays with the very concept model that Colin Cantwell built of the T-16 during this scene.