Archive for Items Categorized 'Aviation', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

A Leap from the Clouds

by Jerry Kuntz

Gravity works. Every time. Nowadays, most skydiving accidents result from an error in judgement not equipment failure. Some would argue that the first error is jumping out of a perfectly good airplane . . .

Antonov’s Heavy Transports: From the An-22 to An-225

by Gordon and Komissarov

The war in Ukraine is in the news daily but people seem to have forgotten already that among its early casualties was the one existing example of the world’s heaviest aircraft, once called by the NY Times “Ukraine’s winged ambassador to the world.” Let this fine book show you what you missed if you never saw it.

The Trans-Atlantic Pioneers

by Bruce Hales-Dutton

2019 marked the centenary of the first nonstop transatlantic flight. You’d think the world would be awash in books about that—but it’s not! Good thing this is a fine book, albeit bland.

MiG-29 in PAF

by Marek Radomski

Not a model history but a collection of color plates to show modelers what the Fulcrum looked like in its 20-year tour of duty with the Polish Air Force.

Queen of the Skies: The Lockheed Constellation

by Claude G. Luisada

Even almost a decade after its publication, this book still matters—and it comes with a Lockheed Manual on CD that you’d rarely find even at auction.

Lockheed Constellation: A History

by Graham M. Simons

The dolphin-shaped fuselage looked like no other. The triple tail made it instantly recognizable. It remained useful decades after jet airliners pushed it out of mainline service. There should be piles of books about it—but there aren’t. This is a good one.

Balloons and Airships: A Tale of Lighter Than Air Aviation

by Anthony Burton

What huge advantage does an LTA craft have still today? Range. This old story has a future, and every now and then a new book comes along to bring us current.

Sunbeam Aero Engines

by Alec Brew

Within the arc from tinplate working to land speed record cars fall many interim steps, and this small book gives a thorough account of how Sunbeam got into the aero engine business and how that spilled over into record cars.

Spanish Republican Aces

by Rafael A. Permuy López

Spain’s 1936–1939 Civil War was a complicated affair—and not discussed for decades after. One small aspect of it, the aircraft flown by foreign and Spanish pilots on the socialist Republican side supported by Russia, is presented here.

Last of the Flying Clippers: The Boeing B-314 Story

by M.D. Klaäs

For the few years these magnificent flying boats operated they raised the bar—and putting the “air” into transatlantic airmail is only of the things Pan Am’s famous B-314 clippers were the first to accomplish.

Big Wings: The Largest Aeroplanes Ever Built

by Philip Kaplan

Splendidly illustrated with not only aircraft “stuff,” this book takes a sometimes nostalgic and always sympathetic look at two dozen big birds.

I Kept No Diary

by F.R. (Rod) Banks

If your motor requires high octane fuel it probably has high compression. Banks is the man who championed this technology—and a thousand other things—which is probably why he had no time to keep a diary. He was 80 when he wrote this book, and still working!