The Raspet Flight Research Laboratory at Mississippi State received a national achievement honor named for an American aviation pioneer.

The William T. Piper Sr. General Aviation Award recently was presented by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the 1998 World Aviation Congress and Exposition in Anaheim, Calif.

Named for the man whose name and airplane are synonymous with general aviation, the award recognizes the lab's 50 years of continuous aviation-related research.

Adjoining Starkville's Bryan Field, the Raspet Lab is the research unit of the Aerospace Engineering Department. It is the only comprehensive, university-based flight research facility in the United States.

"The objectives of the Raspet Lab always have been to conduct leading-edge research and to provide graduate and undergraduate students hands-on experience to supplement their classroom activities," said lab director A. George Bennett Jr.

Bennett, an MSU graduate, said the lab's international reputation for successfully employing modern composite materials was enhanced greatly in 1986. That was the year the research and development arm of Japan's Honda Motor Co. signed a major, multi-year contract with the university to design and assemble large aircraft components from composites.

Bennett said current research projects include work with Florida-based Mod-Works, DuPont Aerospace, and Bosch Aerospace Inc. of Huntsville, Ala.

Federally sponsored projects include a university/industrial project to develop large-scale composite structures for the Office of Naval Research and a NASA study of platforms to support satellite-borne remote sensing equipment.