In Wilder West, at 740m, Niki Wilder hosts an air race track, which I visited for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and was instantly hooked. You can hop into a plane and tear around the track at high-speed, bumping and dodging others as you jockey for position in the turns. Seriously, this is so addictive, that I dropped everything to return to a plane that I abandoned months ago in favour of helicopters.

My new racer, Terra Tachyon, is shaping up to be a powerful little thing. With a top speed of about 110 knots (or around 200 km/h), it can lap the course seconds faster than the competition.

Of course, speed isn't everything. And I wouldn't want to make racing easy, so I threw in a couple of twists. First, you have limited fuel. This means in an endurance race, you need to time your pit-stops carefully, or you'll find your engine sputtering out with another plane on your tail. On top of that, it has an optional damage mode, in which collisions will damage various parts of your plane. So watch your turns around the pylon -- a wing-strike will shear the wing right off. (And no, you can't fly with one wing.)

For novice pilots, or those who like to fly stunts or fly tours over SL, I added easier, optional flight models. Click a button, and the plane becomes slow and forgiving in turns.

As Socrates once said, "But wait! There's more!" Half the fun with racers is the cool paint: racing lines, checkers, and numbers. The Tachyon's paint menu lets you not only choose from five paint schemes, but also add your own. If you have a knack for Photoshop, pick up the templates from my support page, and paint your Tachyon.

It's been a blast working on this one. If all goes well, the Tachyon will be available at Abbotts Aerodrome this Saturday (Dec. 22). Bring it to Wilder West to tear up the track. See if you can beat Niki's top laptime of just under 14 seconds.