An experimental aircraft is an aircraft that has not yet been fully proven in flight. Often, this implies that new aerospace technologies are being tested on the aircraft, though the label is more broad.
The term "experimental aircraft" is also sometimes used to refer to aircraft flown with an "Experimental" category airworthiness certificate. In the U.S. this includes most homebuilt aircraft; many of which are based on conventional designs and hence are experimental only in name.
Famous quotes containing the word experimental:
“The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is based on induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)