A full-sized tail from a 757 commercial aircraft was modified and equipped with tiny jets called "sweeping jet actuators" that blow air across the rudder surfaces. A major objective of the tests was to show that active flow control can enhance the performance of a vertical tail enough to enable future designers to reduce the size of the structure for a whole family of airplanes. That could reduce the penalties related to the vertical tail that aircraft currently pay in drag and weight. The testing took place at the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center's 40- by 80-foot wind tunnel at Ames in Moffett Field, California. The flow control on the 757 vertical tail model comes from sweeping jet actuators, which are devices that essentially blow air in a sweeping motion along the span of the tail. The test vertical tail is an actual 757 vertical tail that came out of an aircraft bone yard in Arizona.