Ralph D. Kimberlin

Dr. Ralph Kimberlin wrote the text book “Flight Testing of Fixed-Wing Aircraft”. He is a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots with 8500 flight hours in over 250 different aircraft including 25 first flights. He earned a Doctor of Engineering from the Technical University of Aachen, Germany. He is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and was commissioned as an Air Force officer. While serving in Vietnam, he was one of three officers responsible for the development and combat evaluation of the AC-47 side-firing gun ship. He was a test pilot and flight test engineer for Piper, Rockwell International, and Beech Aircraft companies for 10 years. He was a professor and program chair at the University of Tennessee Space Institute for 27 years. Dr. Kimberlin has taught courses in Performance Flight Test and Stability & Control Flight Test at Florida Tech since 2012.