Tera Q.
(Alias "Go-Go")

The Legendary Mr. Christopherson loves to tell of the time back in the fall of '93 when he had in his Creative Expressions class the most unique and creative person ever to design transport vehicles, Ms. Tera Q. Of course, back then Ms. Q.'s efforts were confined to folding up paper planes and inflating balloons. Her razor‑sharp mind immediately noticed the difference between the way a paper plane flies as opposed to a blown up balloon.

The Legendary Mr. Christopherson remembers specifi­cally the exciting week during which Ms. Q. was testing her theories out about balloon flight. The air was continually filled with the long-winded, fart‑like sounds of flying balloons. Students were forced to duck down to avoid being hit by one of young Tera's wildly erratic, rubber aircraft. Many were the times that students could be seen grabbing handfuls of Kleenex in order to wipe the flying balloon exhaust/slobber from their faces.

And then came the culmination of her experiments: one of her larger efforts, a fifty foot weather bal­loon which she managed to inflate in the Principal's office, blew up with a boom that shook most of the Parkland area and caused the scrambling of Air Force jets at nearby McChord, AFB, looking for the perpetrators of this apparent explosive attack. Luckily, the only real dam­age was confined to the Principal's office, which was totally demolished, as well as the few hundred windows around the school’s neighborhood knocked out by the blast.

But back to the present. Everyone is surely familiar with at least one or two of her designs. She is credited with the concept of building personality into aircraft design. Q.'s planes seem to have a human‑like element about them. People all around the world fight to get on airline flights which feature Tera's aircraft with their painted on toothy grins and happy faces. With these wonderful planes in the air, the expression "the friendly skies" takes on a whole new meaning.

She is currently building only one model of her automobile, the "Carpull." Her unique design involves a rather large, blob‑like "puller," containing the vehicle's power plant, which is permanently attached to the car's front, and also helps to keep the thing from being blown away by a strong wind since the car itself is quite small and light‑weight. (Test drivers note a certain difficulty in viewing the road ahead, a criticism duly noted by  the car's designer.) This special design has been studied extensively by most other auto manufacturers around the world, though none have chosen to incorporated it in their own auto designs as yet.

Unfortunately, her one and only design for a sea‑going ship had a flaw in it. The ship was a bit oddly shaped and tended to sort of fall over in the water and sink. This was evidently the result of misread instructions.  The weighty engines were mounted "in the side," rather than "inside" (the hull) as called for by the blueprints. After two or three hundred unsuccessful attempts to sail the "Teraboat," it was finally abandoned.

But when it comes to aircraft, no one can come close to dupli­cating the famous "Tera‑Touch," as her warm, human approach to design has come to be called. Hats off to this very innovative de­signer.