Introducing Slippy

I’ve mentioned my new airplane a couple times on here, though not as often as I probably should have.  I’ve omitted a whole saga with getting a brake leak fixed and a particularly exciting go-around caused because I let some pilot-induced oscillations get the better of me on the ground.

Today’s post is where I come clean about another facet of the aircraft and my relation to it.  I seem to have given her a name.

I haven’t named any of my previous vehicles.  Not even my beloved Archer on which I cut my aviation teeth.  I laways referred to her by her callsign or as “The Archer.”  Fanciful names were not for me.

This plane is different.  It’s quirky nature and charmed life combined in my head to form a name.  This happened without my intention – or really permission.  I slowly started thinking of her as Sleipnir.  If you’re not a comics fan or familiar with Norse mythology, that’s the name of Odin‘s eight-legged flying horse.  Sleipnir is called the best of all horses, and that’s how I think of the Viking.  It stuck in my head and it’s become the name of the plane to me.

I finally sheepishly mentioned that I’d named it to Brenda – who names all her vehicles – and she somehow improved it.  “You mean we could call her Slippy for short?”

That’s perfect.  It’s got the right light-hearted ring to it, and alludes to the slick airframe that helps Slippy go so fast.  So, Sleipnir – Slippy for short – is our new girl.  (Yeah, planes are female. That seems true to me in the same way that GNU software is green.  I don’t understand it, mind you…)

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