Click to Buy
Okay, I know I said the whole book review thing was a dead loss for me, but here is another.
The best book I have read since learning to fly is volume one in Barry Schiff’s proficient pilot series. This is a link to the whole boxed set, a set I now think is invaluable. The book reads like a series of columns from a magazine that have been expanded a bit. I suspect that Schiff has a regular gig and has figured out a way to repackage writing he has already done… but what great stuff it is.
This would be a terrible book for someone getting ready to learn to fly or a non-pilot, but for a new pilot the chapters are awesome. Each of the VFR related chapters made me want to go out and fly in a particular way to get the feel for the lesson Schiff was trying to get across. For example, it seems like a pain to go get a glider and learn to fly it if you don’t live in the soaring meccas. Schiff points out that a powered airplane can be made to mimic a glider by throttling back. Find the power setting that gives you a three hundred foot per minute sink and then try to stay aloft in your Cessna 172. His explanation of flying in the region of reversed control is not just lucid, it has directions on how to graph the control regions of yourself in the plane you usually fly. The book is a recipe for a couple hundred hours of really fun, revealing flying. I am looking forward to putting some of these gems into practice.
Flying Summers Brothers 