Stick and Rudder

Subtitle of this book reads “An explanation of the Art of Flying“. And the book do just that. Not a word less not a word more. But the way it does so is different than anything I’ve read about this anywhere else be it the internet, books or movies.

The book was written in 1944. In times when most planes had open cockpits, when intercoms (or headsets) were unknown, when plane doing 110 knots were seen as fast. Yet if you drop some of authors’ comments on that and concentrate on what is written about the flying itself – you suddenly see that nothing changed. All planes fly based on the same principles – air moving against wings – and nothing changed over those over 60 years.

What makes this book so special? Because art of flying was very, very new thing then, most of aircrafts behaved, for a lack of better word, bad. They were hard (at least harder that today) to fly. That made pilots job much more demanding than today and obviously it was much more important that pilot actually understood what he was doing and why. And the author accomplishes it with great success. His language is simple, yet very descriptive. He talks about all those things happening around plane and with plane with such ease, that I simply can’t imagine anybody having hard time understanding it.

Before reading this book I thought that I know why planes fly, why they climb or descent, why they stall and fall. After reading this book I can tell, that although I wasn’t wrong on anything many things and ideas I had got straighten out and now looks much, much simpler and easier to follow. I’m sure it will make all mu future lessons my easier.

So if you want to better understand (or understand at all) what’s going up there – it’s a must read position for you.

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