Airspeeders

Airspeeders are personal transport vehicles designed for speed and maneuverability. While specific models have different capabilities, airspeeders as a general class range from low-level vehicles to high-altitude craft that can travel up to 25 kilometers above ground level. Most airspeeders have a flight ceiling of less than 250 meters, deriving maximum lift from the atmosphere and without the need for pressurized pilot compartments.

Airspeeders are superb “hit-and-run” combat vehicles, with top-end speeds exceeding 900 kilometers per hour. They are sleek and aerodynamic, and use mechanical control flaps for high-speed turns without loss of speed. Because of these capabilities, they are fairly difficult to track with targeting computers, and while not as sturdy as cloud cars, they are far more difficult to hit—especially with slow-response artillery weapons.

Airspeeders are considered sport and speed vehicles, and so have a notoriously low cargo capacity, usually carrying only one to two people. Civilian airspeeders are often carefully regulated (except on frontier worlds), simply because these vehicles are very dangerous in the hands of untrained novices. There are many horror stories of these vehicles getting away from a new pilot and plunging into a crowd of spectators—or into nearby houses.

Local governments, law enforcement agencies, and even Rebel Alliance/New Republic forces use many modified varieties of airspeeders, because they are cheap and reliable defense craft and can easily carry a number of powerful weapons. Although the conversion process for demanding environments can be tricky, once the vehicles are flight-worthy they require much less maintenance than cloud cars.

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Source: REUP:409