Customer Reviews

Aerodynamics, Aeronautics, and Flight Mechanics

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

We used this book for my Stability and Control class in UCLA and I have to say that almost all of my classmates hated it! It is full of mistakes and misprints, almost no examples and the very limited ones are hard to understand. You need a very strong back ground or a really good professor to understand this book. On the other hand, it was handy for Boeing 747 and Cherokee stats. Therefore I can not say "do not buy it" but at least look for a better one.

As I read in another review, the quality of the book depends on what you need it for. Although it covers a breadth of topics, it is poor for learning from. There are misprints and not enough examples. It also annoyed me that the derivations weren't always worked out completely, sometimes introducing other variables without explaination. You'd have to have read and absorbed all the previous chapters to make those leaps on your own. There is a very good list of notations in the back, however, and the author is consistent with it which somewhat lessens this problem. A pet peeve from the book, however, is how the author assigns writing computer programs as problems, and then refers to those programs as derivations of other principles later in the book. For a better introduction on aeronautical principles, I recommend Anderson's text, which is an easy read and is very clear in its derivations.

I have both editions of this book. The first one was not so good; the second is still worse. It is the first edition with some few changes and many misprints. The introduction of some computer programs does not make this book an up-to-date one.
It is still an old book with just a colorfull cover.

I had this book while in college, and now I use it frequently at work. As a teaching tool it is horrible. It is vague and lacks detailed explanations. For real world use it is invaluable. I use it a lot and it is an excellent general reference book. If you need a general reference for aerodynamics and aircraft flight get it. If you are looking for a teaching tool look elsewhere.

Unfortunately had to use this one for two corses. It's a paperweight and nothing more. The set up of the text is good but most of the time it felt like the guy got bored. Basically, here is a start and the rest do your own reasearch. If you have lots of spare time on your hands, this book is for you. If not, try David Anderson's books instead.

From the selections of texts I have had to read this year including: Gas Dynamics, Numerical Methods with Matlab, and Aerodynamics, this text was by far the worst. It is all talk and no example. There are maybe two or three actual examples in the whole thing. The sections are setup in a logical manner and the flow was okay. However, there is no overall view provided. Equations are dropped out as though they are they are important, when they're just intermediate steps to other equations.

Homework problems are insanely hard to do for those unfamiliar with the subject. Do not read this book expecting to learn how to build a plane. The only thing you can pick up are broad concepts. Example, Chapter 4 is on drag, most books do a really good job of giving you an idea of the big picture and how to use concepts. Rather than give a broad overview of the overall or total drag and then breaking it down from there, the author starts examining pieces of the drag problem and connects some of them together near the middle, without talking about how to incorporate the rest and ends with a talk about getting minimum drag. Horrible explanation.

Equations, explanations and concepts need to be presented in a clearer fashion examples need to be added and then it might be a decent book. Until then it's only a mediocre piece of work.

I plead that this not be used as text for any course, as it is a lousy teaching book. It lacks continuity and contains far to many typos. Does make a good desk ref, lots of real world data, but with an under used index individuals unfamiliar with the text might have a hard time finding what they are looking for.

This book is by far the best I'v seen in it's class. I have similare books by J. Anderson and J. Bertin & M. Smith, all of which I feel are excelent texts. But this book stands above them all. I specifically like this book for its completeness and I especially like its significant amounts of included data, especially for the Cherokee 180, which really give you a feel for reality, and a means to calibrate your calculations.