By: Allen Huang

It was 2020, after the annual Egg Hunt on Roblox. The account “Jckarateman” was playing a game called “Plane Crazy”; he was building a new build, consisting of multiple rockets and jet engines and equipped with only two missiles, a few guns, and wings. Little did Jckarateman know, this was the beginning of a jet that would become his ultimate weapon.

By 2021, Jckarateman began noticing that the jet was underpowered. The ultimate solution was to add more rocket engines. Even with these upgrades, the jet only gained a bit more speed and a lot more weight. This made the jet obsolete in comparison to the jets other people had built for dogfights. This mode of fighting included aircrafts shooting at each other, which the original X-78 wasn’t exactly good at. Unfortunately for the Jckarateman account, it was soon hacked and lost during 2022, getting rid of any history of the old fighter jet.

However, once Jckarateman was gone, Jckarateman2 came along, and this was when the X-78 became more advanced, faster, and overall more terrifying to opponents. The jet was rebuilt, this time with a new rear design, sporting a large trapezoid shaped horizontal stabilizer and two large vertical stabilizers. Now, with two massive vertical stabilizers with landing gears in the front, the X-78’s rear was back-heavy. The solution for this was two wheels that would be part of the two stabilizers. Even with these fixes, the jet still wasn’t optimal for combat with other aircraft, it was more of a ground combat weapon than anything. While lifting the new plane off the ground was easier than it was with the original, the speed still wasn’t there, and nose diving into enemies was the only good option.

While there were a few more upgrades, such as ballast blocks that acted like weights to counteract the front, it still wasn’t good enough for combat. As the months went on, the jet was forgotten, and other builds were created that were more advanced. That was, until someone named Astro showed up in the same server as Jckarateman2. At this time, the jet was brought back out after being forgotten. It was still severely underpowered.

Luckily, Astro was there to teach Jckarateman2 a few things about motor locking. Motor locking is a very useful and important tool when improving builds. By having the motors be turned into the “lock” setting, you essentially make the rectangle part no-clip into the plate it is connected to. Once you stack these, you get a motor lock tower. This was added into the small fighter jet, and with some extra engines, the X-78 began to be more powerful.