Free Flight Research at Lockheed-Georgia

For several years a jet-powered Caproni A21 sailplane has been used, in conjunction with several remotely controlled research vehicles, for research into advanced technologies. These vehicles have been used to explore such areas as laminar flow control, spanwise blowing, parameter identification methods, fiber optics, airframe noise and command augmentation techniques. The manned Caproni A21J, operated at Mississippi State University, is fully instrumented and is capable of recording up to 32 channels of data. The 0.3-scale, RCRV version of the Caproni is operated at Lockheed-Georgia in conjunction with other RCRV's. This vehicle, which telemeters up to 24 channels of data, is flown by one operator.