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Good books to read (aviation related)

Just finished “Wings on my sleeve” by Eric Brown.

Good,now you have time to read “Wings of the Luftwaffe” and even better “Wings of the Weird and Wonderful”. The latter in particular is maybe even better than “…on my sleeve”. He flew some really extraordinary things.

I can’t remember which book describes his first encounter with a helicopter. Two had been shipped over to somewhere in the north of England, and he and another pilot were sent to bring them south. But the instructor hadn’t shown up. So they got in, bimbled around a bit, and flew them home. To anyone who has ever tried to fly a helicopter, that is absolutely astounding.

Or the GAL56, a tail-less glider, which killed everyone who tried to fly it except him, including the company’s chief test pilot.

Last Edited by johnh at 19 Feb 11:13
LFMD, France

I’m currently listening to So Disdained, which is good so far. The first quarter is a realistic account of someone trying to make money from flying in the decade after WWI. I’d read A Town Like Alice and seen a few other titles, but it turns out Nevil Shute designed the R100 airship, the Airspeed Envoy/Oxford, and flew his own Percival Proctor from England to Australia and back.

A quick google gives these books as flying-related: Round the Bend, Pastoral, Marazan, Stephen Morris, Pilotage, An Old Captivity, No Highway, Landfall, and So Disdained.

Bréguet 19:

Last Edited by Capitaine at 27 Apr 15:51
EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom

I just finished Air Wars (don’t see another reference to it here), the commercial story of Airbus vs Boeing. It’s also the story of John Leahy’s tenure at Airbus. It was fascinating. Ironically, I bought at the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle.

LFMD, France

I’d like to recommend “Why Planes Crash” by David Soucie, which I don’t see listed above.

I “read” this as an audiobook on Audible and found it very engaging, because the author had progressed in his career through being a pilot, mechanic (and then in charge of company maintenance department), an FAA executive (developing a new computer system that gave tremendous insights) before becoming an aviation executive. There are several very significant points in the book that I won’t spoil for you, but being able to read about different views from each aspect of maintenance (on the shop floor, the company management and the regulator) brings home the different pressures that those in each role.

I think it was free on Audible with their subscription, but would be worth paying for if not.

FlyerDavidUK, PPL & IR Instructor
EGBJ, United Kingdom

To add to Capitaine’s list, ‘Slide Rule’ is an autobiography of Nevil Shute, and therefore has a lot of aviation in it. A while since I read it… my recollection is that it was interesting as much as enjoyable. He recounts how he was defrauding his benefactor with a view to keeping the Airspeed factory in business (eventually the gamble paid off) and historical interest – barely literate workers building futuristic airships out in the countryside and using so many intestines to make the gas bags that they caused a national sausage shortage.

For the French readers among you (there’s no translation in any language as far as I know), I highly recommend L’oiseau Canari by Armand Lotti. It recounts the attempts and eventual success of the first French Atlantic crossing in 1928-1929.

etn
EDQN, Germany

Thread drift alert

I could not believe such totally brain-dead logic – basically it consigns the rest of the flight to hand-flying and a fairly easy instrument approach – but another crew reported having to do exactly that on the previous page. They were lucky; they were in VMC for the rest of the flight.

How can this kind of stuff enter airline service without challenge?

Absolutely.

In the same vein, being in the cruise and having an AP disconnecting itself due to loss of valid airspeed (AF447) beats my logics. I would have thought that programming detection and discarding of invalid signals an easy task. A A/THR warning would be enough to warn the crew to now use manual thrust… without having the AP disconnect itself.
Unfortunately not the only question mark re Airbus’s design philosophy, and the architecture of their automated systems. Integration is a good thing, too much of it not so.

Last Edited by Dan at 30 Apr 07:26
Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

@Dan it is more complex than that, although a computer scientist might devise a logic flow to cope with the scenario?

While the FAA dwells quite a lot on the threats of high altitude operations (effect of compressibility on critical alpha, oxygen requirements) in the ATP oral, EASA/CAA tends to focus on standard stall recovery when briefing the AF447 case study in CRM.

When the pitot static failed, the Air Data Computer stopped calculating an altimeter adjustment for compressibility and the altimeter reported an immediate jump down of approximately 500 feet. How should the A/P react? Arguably, the Autopilot and Alternate law modes should default down to a form of simple wing leveller mode?

Going back on thread I recently got John and Ann Tusa’s book on the Berlin Airlift on Kobo and looking forward to reading it.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

RobertL18C wrote:

When the pitot static failed, the Air Data Computer stopped calculating an altimeter adjustment for compressibility and the altimeter reported an immediate jump down of approximately 500 feet.

The immediate pilot reaction to an ASI failure in manual flight should be “do nothing”. The immediate reaction of the ADC should be the same. In other words, it should not immediately jump down 500 feet.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Thanks for the recommendation @etn, just turned the last page.

L’oiseau Canari by Armand Lotti. It recounts the attempts and eventual success of the first French Atlantic crossing in 1928-1929.

A really great adventure and a good read… though the French used is quite elaborated, reflecting a language that was in vogue and cherished by the upper class of the time. No wonder the book took 40 years to be written
Downloaded in digital from Cultura, a great buy.

Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland
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