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NASA's single-seat F-16XL (ship #1), tail number 849, is stationed at Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California. It arrived at Dryden on March 10, 1989, from General Dynamics in Fort Worth, TX.
The aircraft was most recently used in the Cranked-Arrow Wing Aerodynamics Project (CAWAP) to test boundary layer pressures and distribution. The modified airplane featured a delta "cranked-arrow" wing with strips of tubing along the leading edge to the trailing edge to sense static on the wing and obtain pressure distribution data. The right wing received data on pressure distribution and the left wing had three types of instrumentation - preston tubes to measure local skin friction, boundary layer rakes to measure boundary layer profiles (the layer where the air interacts with the surfaces of a moving aircraft), and hot films to determine boundary layer transition locations.
The first flight of CAWAP occurred on November 21, 1995, and the test program ended in April 1996.
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