Customer Reviews

Dynamics of Atmospheric Flight

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The new edition by Etkin/Reid is probably suitable for undergraduate study and introductory flight mechanics but the 72 Etkin, edition is probably the most useful on the long run for graduate students and practising engineers as it is quite comprehensive. It is unfortunate that this edition is out of print and is quite difficult to procure. This book is even more useful with Steven & Lewis's, Aircraft Control and Simulation.

yes it is like the bible, because it gives every information in such a way that you find your own way to learn.... it would be better and easy to read if the pages were bigger. that's it....

i taught a course for several years at the University of Maryland using this book. It is the best book on aircraft static and dynamic stability. Other books on this subject skip over static stbility and go on to dynamic stability and feed back controls. Etkin does cover dynamic stability pretty well, but when he gets into any type of feedback control such as yaw mode supression, this book shows it age. Even in dynamic statility work, the non-dimensionalizing of the equations (non-dimentional time particularly) is adds nothing. If this section were up to date, then it would be a bit more useful. Nevertheless, the static stability coveage is excellent: there are no other books on the market which do this area as well. It would be more useful if feedback controls were left to a second volume and maybe helipter static stability covered as well.

Definitive stability and control textbook. WAY over the average aircraft homebuilder's head, but if you really want to know why it flys the way it does, you need to understand this stuff.