Customer Reviews

A Field Guide to Airplanes: of North America

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

 

 

This well organized book contains more than 350 aircraft of North America. Each aircraft is well described and a history and statistical information is nicely presented. One of the more unique parts of this guide is that each aircraft is given a small list of items that separate it from similar looking aircraft. The illustrations are precise and very accurate, too. This guide is wonderful and comes in very handy. There are more planes that could be added and possibly a few rarities that could be removed, but the book's wealth of information weighs over. This guide aids beautifully in identification of aircraft and a second book, such as Jane's World Aircraft Recognition Handbook, would make a great companion to fill in all the information. All in all, this book is very worthwhile to any aviation enthusiast.

This is a great book for anyone who is interested in aviation or an novice "plane-spotter". The book is set up much like (as the title says) a field guide complete with field marks for quick identification. Also a great book for getting child that is interested in airplanes. There is also a helicopter section added.

This book is a disappointment. The first edition, published in 1984 was a wonderful find, a book I carried with me when I traveled. The third edition suffers from poor quality paper, re-used printing plates, and a format (5 1/2" x 8 1/2") that hardly qualifies it as a "field guide."

Montgomery and Foster did an excellent job of updating aircraft models, organizing aircraft by type, providing brief descriptions, and highlighting the subtle cues that allow one to differentiate between different series of an aircraft model. Unfortunately, the details of the line drawings are lost in the third edition, with many of the subtleties unreadable due to the inferior paper and printing process used. The first edition was printed on high-opacity white stock; this edition is printed on the same type of paper often found in mass-market paperbacks, barely above the quality of newsprint. In addition, the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, chose to reformat the book to a size that makes it difficult to slip into a jacket pocket. The binding and cover are poor. I'm sure if I chose to keep this book (I returned it) it would fall apart within a year.

Find a new publisher, guys.

This is an excellent book. I've been disappointed in other guide books that omit older planes. In my area, older planes and even biplanes are the most interesting things flying out of the small fields. It's also helpful that it doesn't try to cover the European types we just don't see here. The organizational scheme is also good. Some books try to group planes by the number engines, wing type, etc. But that approach puts huge and tiny planes in the same section. THIS book does it properly, seperating out the airliners from the private types.

The format of "A Field Guide to Airplanes" will be familiar to birdwatchers, as the authors have taken the style of Peterson's famous identification guides and applied it to aircraft. There's nothing terribly original in this, as Peterson himself worked with the military in World War II to develop spotter's guides based on the principles he developed.

All of which takes nothing away from the accomplishment of the authors. This "Field Guide" is a marvelous book for aircraft watchers of all ages. I bought my copy to give to a 9 year old who's currently fascinated by every flying machine that passes over his house, but I find it equally as interesting to thumb through. It's small enough to slip in a pocket and complete enough to identify most of the aircraft you're likely to encounter.

As other reviewers have noted, though, it's getting a bit out of date. The last revision was in 1992, and since then we've seen the introduction of a number of new airliners and a veritible explosion of new models in the General Aviation marketplace. You won't find the 777 here, or the new Cirrus or Eclipse. It would be nice to see a revised edition in the next few years.

I'm an air traffic controller and I give this book to my trainees as they learn to identify various aircraft from the tower. It's good at highlighting the specific features that separate similar looking aircraft.

This book is a relatively comprehensive guide to North American aircraft that you're likely to see flying today.

A word of warning: The book's editing is a bit sloppy, and it really serves as a guide for the casual and curious observer. It's a good book to take along to the air show.

Serious aircraft enthusiasts, pilots, and engineers will be disappointed by both the lack of technical detail and the occasional error (which they will recognize immediately). For example, the Piper Meridian is a pressurized single turboprop, not a "turbocharged" Malibu. Errors like this detract from the credibility of the book.

When will we get a comprehensive guide to modern civilian aircraft, that is both technically correct AND up to date? This book is not it.

As much as I enjoy aircraft, I was thoroughly disappointed with the Kindle version of this aircraft recognition guide. The printed edition probably surpassed the Kindle by far. The images were very poor, and next to being useless. Really wish I could have gotten my money back on this one. My lesson learned, hopefully will save many others from the same pitfall.

It's useful to identifying an aircraft and nothing else. If you've often posed yourself the question, "what airplane is that?", this might be a useful book. Illustrations are uninspiring though.

A few years ago janes published a "aircraft recognition guide" it had the ID illustrations but also color pictures and glossy pages. It even told you about the aircraft (approx. details) and even how many were built.

This book, however, has none of it. Just drawings of the shape and names of the airplanes. Not even the new janes compare to color edition... sad to see such a good pocket reference go. This one is surely no substitute.

I like the content and organization, but the printing job looks like a poor quality third generation photocopy. Contacted the publisher about it, but they didn't respond.