Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying

by Langewiesche, Wolfgang

• ISBN13: 9780070362406
• ISBN10: 0070362408
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1990-09-22
• Publisher: McGraw Hill

Summary

WHAT'S IN STICK AND RUDDER: The invisible secret of all heavier-than-air flight: the Angle of Attack.What it is, and why it can't be seen. How lift is made, and what the pilot has to do with it. Why airplanes stallHow do you know you're about to stall? The landing approach.How the pilot's eye functions in judging the approach. The visual clues by which an experienced pilot unconsciously judges:how you can quickly learn to use them. "The Spot that does not move."This is the first statement of this phenomenon. A foolproof method of making a landing approach across pole lines and trees. The elevator and the throttle.One controls the speed, the other controls climb and descent. Which is which? The paradox of the glide.By pointing the nose down less steeply, you descend more steeply. By pointing the nose down more steeply, you can glide further. What's the rudder for?The rudder does NOT turn the airplane the way a boat's rudder turns the boat. Then what does it do? How a turn is flown.The role of ailerons, rudder, and elevator in making a turn. The landing--how it's made.The visual clues that tell you where the ground is. The "tail-dragger" landing gear and what's tricky about it.This is probably the only analysis of tail-draggers now available to those who want to fly one. The tricycle landing gear and what's so good about it.A strong advocacy of the tricycle gear written at a time when almost all civil airplanes were taildraggers. Why the airplane doesn't feel the wind. Why the airplane usually flies a little sidewise. Plus:a chapter on Air Accidents by Leighton Collins, founder and editor of AIR FACTS. His analyses of aviation's safety problems have deeply influenced pilots and aeronautical engineers and have contributed to the benign characteristics of today's airplane.Stick and Rudderis the first exact analysis of the art of flying ever attempted. It has been continously in print for thirty-three years. It shows precisely what the pilot does when he flies, just how he does it, and why.Because the basics are largely unchanging, the book therefore is applicable to large airplanes and small, old airplanes and new, and is of interest not only to the learner but also to the accomplished pilot and to the instructor himself.WhenStick and Rudderfirst came out, some of its contents were considered highly controversial. In recent years its formulations have become widely accepted. Pilots and flight instructors have found that the book works.Today several excellent manuals offer the pilot accurate and valuable technical information. ButStick and Rudderremains the leading think-book on the art of flying. One thorough reading of it is the equivalent of many hours of practice.

Author Biography

WOLFGANG LANGEWIESCHE first soloed in 1934 in Chicago. Early in his flying he was struck by a strange discrepancy: in piloting, the words and the realities did not agree. What pilots claimed to be doing, in flying an airplane, was not what they were in fact doing. What the pilot really did was poorly describe in print and in airport talk.

Langewiesche set himself the task of describing more accurately and realistically what the pilot really does when he flies.

The first result, from 1940 on, was a series of articles in AIR FACTS, analyzing various points of piloting technique. In 1944 STICK AND RUDDER was published.

Langewiesche has been a test pilot for Cessna, Change Vought, and Kollsman and has also done free-lance testing. He was written on flying, and other matters, in HARPER'S, the SATURDAY EVENING POST, and READER'S DIGEST. He has made long trips over large parts of the world in airplanes of his own.

Table of Contents

PART I WINGS
How a Wing Is Flown	6	(19)
The Airplane's Gaits	25	(20)
Lift and Buoyancy	45	(11)
The Flying Instinct	56	(23)
PART II SOME AIR SENSE
The Law of the Roller Coaster	79	(8)
Wind Drift	87	(23)
What the Airplane Wants to Do	110	(27)
That Thing Called Torque	137	(11)
PART III THE CONTROLS
The Flippers and the Throttle	148	(15)
The Ailerons	163	(13)
The Rudder	176	(14)
PART IV THE BASIC MANEUVERS
The Turn	190	(40)
Straight and Level Cruising	230	(10)
The Glide	240	(22)
PART V GETTING DOWN
The Approach	262	(25)
The Landing	287	(25)
The Landing Run	312	(11)
PART VI THE DANGERS OF THE AIR
Leighton Collins
The Dangers of the Air	323	(29)
PART VII SOME MORE AIR SENSE
The Working Speeds of an Airplane	352
Thin Air	266