Stick and Rudder

Wet day and no flying, so I picked up my well-thumbed copy of Wolfgang Langewiesche's classic book, Stick and Rudder. This book, written in 1944, has been a sort of bible for pilots, particularly glider pilots. I can't recall who recommended it to me, but I'm grateful to them.

The book's a bit repetitive and simplistic, but it has some important lessons for a glider pilot. Overall, it's an extended lesson about Angle of Attack and the importance of getting the stick forward if things look like getting unstuck.

It's a little quirky and old-fashioned in talking about flippers instead of elevators, and pressing for tricycle undercarriage on planes to cut down on ground loops, but it helped me to understand more about adverse yaw etc. It's the book for convincing (or amazing) non-flyers that the stick controls speed, the engine controls altitude and the rudder doesn't turn an airplane!

For all it's old-fashioned charm, recommended.