Customer Reviews

Ace the Technical Pilot Interview

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

 

 

This book is literally full of errors and inaccuracies. While it has helped me refresh my memory a bit, one really has to be careful and critical to avoid learning wrong answers! Sometimes the given answer is even exactly the opposite of the correct answer. Some examples:

1. What is Dutch Roll?
"(...) the outer, upward-moving wing stalls and loses all lift, and therefore the wing drops."
The author doesn't have a clue of how Dutch roll works. The wing certainly does not stall, Dutch roll actually starts out as a very gentle instability. And why would the upward-moving, faster wing stall anyway? When a wing is going up, its AOA decreases! If one wing should stall, it should be the other one. Obviously, neither does.

2. The critical engine on a crosswind take-off is NOT the downwind engine. It is in fact the upwind engine. A crosswind from the left does not apply "a restoring force to the right", it in fact makes the aircraft want to turn left into the wind (weathervane effect). When he's already holding a lot of right rudder in a left crosswind (as any airline pilot should know), the author would prefer to lose the left engine?!

3. Vortex generators are not there for "preventing spanwise flow" but for making the boundary layer turbulent so it doesn't detach as early as a laminar flow. To prevent spanwise flow, winglets or fences are used.

4. "Density is defined as mass per unit of volume of a substance. By definition, a block of gas is less dense than the same size block of liquid, which is less dense than the same size block of solid".
Has the author ever wondered why ice floats, then?! "By definition", it should sink.

I could go on and on quoting other errors. There's one on every few pages.

I agree with michel that there are a lot of mistakes in the book. It is good for the questions but NOT for the answers.

Great idea for the book BUT spoiled by incorrect facts and explanations on almost every page! Thus it is good if you use it for the questions but NOT the answers.

Someone (wish I had the time) needs to list all the corrections on a website (just a suggestion) for this book to be fully utilised - until the author can correct the mistakes. (if someone gets the website off the ground, I will gladly contribute correct answers)

Having said this, I am still glad I got the book for the questions and to be pointed in the right direction. If only the author would correct the answers....

Gavin
ATPL

The book has glaring errors about even very basic subjects. In my opinion (airline training captain) it should have been removed from the market years ago.

Like everyone else says, it's great for questions...not so much for the answers. Even just a proofreading would have been nice. I saw "sheer" and "shear" swapped three times (e.g. "wind sheer" and something like "due to shear thrust"). The lift equation was presented as a SUM of density, velocity, lift coefficient, and area rather than the product. And the list goes on....

But then again, it's great for questions to think about! It might be best to buy a used copy that's been marked with corrections.

The book contains a lot of useful information. However, unfortunately, some of the author's example questions are simply answered incorrectly. Be critical.

Just a quick add to the above reviews... I just downloaded the Kindle version as a refresher, and would like to extend my thanks to previous reviewers for the inaccuracy warnings. However, I figured it would still be useful as a brush-up guide.

I would like to add another note to the discussion, which is that the Kindle edition is full of spelling errors. "Camber" is now apparently "Chamber", and instead of leading edge slats, we now have "slots".... I would have hoped that Amazon would have been more careful about the editing of a technical book, rather than allowing spell-checkers to run rampant.

The book is still worth getting as a guide, but buyer be warned.

I found myself browsing through this helpful book for backup or just reviewing items so important for my flight carrier.
Always useful, practical and very well explained.

A must have for anyone who's looking for a refresh in aviation knowledges. I would recommend to everybody going for an airline assesment.

Some subjects are a bit short handled, some are a bit simplistic.
Overall good, interesting, memory-resfreshing.
Useful as a complement of other studies.