See How It Flies

See How It Flies is an excellent on-line book by John Denker. The subtitle is “a new spin on the perceptions, procedures, and principles of flight,” and I think it is quite unique in the way that it integrates practical flying techniques with the physics of flight. Denker is both a physicist and a flight instructor, so I guess such integration makes a certain amount of sense. It’s really a book on how to fly airplanes, with a lot of background material on why things work the way they do. It’s been around since 1996, and since it’s an on-line book (and free, by the way), Denker has updated it over the years based on reader feedback. Copyright date indicates 1996-2008.

Denker seems to be the kind of guy who knows a lot about everything. He wanted simulated wind tunnel graphics for the book, so he wrote a wind tunnel simulator program. He’s done extensive flight instruction, so he knows the kinds of questions and confusions inexperienced pilots are apt to have (though I'm sure most experienced pilots could also learn a lot from this book). He’s a physicist, so he’s not afraid to put a few mathematical expressions in his book (though not a lot – there are many more diagrams and charts than equations). But he’s also a pilot, so he’s not afraid to provide simple, intuitive rules of thumb when they can help (some of them quite literally rules of thumb, like “a thumb at arm’s length subtends 4 degrees,” which is a nice glide slope angle, see figure).

If you want to print the book or have it available off-line, it’s a bit tricky because it is spread across many separate web pages. Saving it correctly with all its graphics and links intact is not easy (at least for me). I was able to find a couple of PDF links to the complete book, but none of the most recent version (this one is from 2001).

No Fly Notes

No flying until next weekend when Ed comes back from vacation. In the meantime, here are some miscellaneous flight-related notes.

Headset - When I decided to start flying again this summer, I realized that the super-cheapo headset I bought 11 years ago needed to be replaced (it shorted out the intercom on a Cessna 172 flight I took a year or so ago). I probably should have gone straight to the classic David Clark headset that so many professionals use ($350 and up), but I decided to try something a bit cheaper that still had good reviews, the Faro G2 for around $180. So far it's working quite well, comfortable and with decent sound and noise suppression (passive, not active). One marketing gimmick is that it comes in various colors. I went with basic black.

Reading - Although I should be focusing on regulations and other flight review topics, I've been reading a "deep background" book called Understanding Flight (Second Edition) by David Anderson and Scott Eberhardt. Although I'm a pilot and a physics major and have read a lot of stuff about the theory of flight, I still enjoy reading a book like this that focuses on physical and intuitive understanding more than on equations. It does assume that you can read graphs and understand what it means for something to depend on velocity-squared or whatever. Two chapters in, and it's really a good read, maybe even better than the classic The Simple Science of Flight (book) and John Denker's great See How It Flies (web site - though Denker's work is much more of a practical how-to for pilots). I'm reading the Kindle version on my iPod Touch. It's OK, but it's one of the few cases where the small screen is annoying due to figures (which fortunately are zoomable) and side bars (text is cut off and lost if the whole side bar will not fit on a single screen - a bug in the Kindle app I think). Maybe I need a real Kindle (or an iPad?).

Helicopters & Scams - Since our wonderful sightseeing and landing adventure in the Grand Canyon in July, my wife has gotten very interested in helicopters, and she plans to take at least an introductory helicopter flight lesson soon. For preparation, I've gotten her a book and a few articles, and we also have viewed a few helicopter training videos on YouTube. Searching for further materials, I discovered the web site PrivatePilotDVD.com (not a link - I suggest you avoid this site) - not a good discovery. The web site is cheesy, but the materials and testimonials looked promising, so I spent $47 to buy a "complete private pilot course" for helicopters. I should have checked it out first, because of course it's a scam. A small package arrived from Hong Kong with two hand-burned discs. The DVD-R has the same helicopter instruction segments we found on YouTube, and the CDR has a bunch of FAA web sites and PDF documents that anyone can easily download for free. Avoid this web site!

"Stick and Rudder" Revisited

Due to other commitments, I won't have a chance to fly for about 10 days or so. But I will have a bit of free time for reading, so I've decided to re-read Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche. This book was first published over 50 years ago and has been in print ever since because it's one of the most useful practical guides to flying ever written. I read it many years ago when I first started flying (maybe 1997). So I think it's time. While it generally applies to any sort of airplane, it feels especially right for flying a tail-wheel airplane with an actual stick (rather than a control yoke), and of course a rudder too.