Classic British Flight Sim

My wonderful wife bought me a Barnes & Noble Nook for my birthday. So far I have almost 200 books loaded onto it. No aviation books yet, but those will come. We're saving up for another move (owner of house we're currently in declared bankruptcy and is losing the house to the bank, yay) so I have to be a bit picky about spending funds to purchase e-books right now. All the ones I currently have are free with one sole exception that cost me a whopping 99¢ (.64 £), Jules Verne's immortal Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

petermcleland wrote:This might be of interest to some:-

http://www.melrosebooks.com/SGbookDetails.php?id=354

"White Ship - Red Crosses" is now in its second edition!

Did you read it Rick?

Hi Folks

I'd just finished 3 flying classics by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
* Southern Mail
* Night Flight
both in a single volume - ISBN 0-14-004170-2
and
* Flight to Arras - ISBN 0-14-018768-5

Worthwhile, but some heavy-going philisophical content.

HTH
ATB
Paul

Just finished Island Pilot (ISBN: 1898852057 / 1-898852-05-7) by Captain Alan Whitfield

An excellent memoir by Captain Alan Whitfield on the work he and others did in setting up the inter-island scheduled flight service in the Shetlands by Loganair.

A perfect companion to the BN2 Islander for FSX and the new VFR Photographic Scenery Vol. 5 - Orkney & Shetland Isles. Well written, amusing and very captivating story, with much personal insight and some measure of life experience. Great stuff

gordon-in-aberdeen wrote:Just finished the excellent Phoenix Squadron by Rowland White.

Just finishing that myself - got it from tesco in their 'BOGOF' promotion - in fact, I picked up loads of Afghanistan/Iraq type books under that scheme - so a happy teddy - but this one, of course, is based around the threat to Belize, even though that only takes up a small part of the book.

If you are a Buccaneer, Phantom, Ark Royal or FAA fan, you should definitely have a gander at this one.

It's at Amazon, too - for half what I paid for it.

The only downer for me, as a born revolutionary, was having to read the shortened biog of every officer and politician in it.

JD

Just got 'Empire of the Clouds - When Britains Aircraft Ruled the World' by James Hamilton-Paterson.

Anyone else have it?

The only downer for me, as a born revolutionary, was having to read the shortened biog of every officer and politician in it.

To be fair it's not every officer, my dad's isn't even mentioned despite appearing as a member of the supporting cast twice.

Chris558 wrote:Just got 'Empire of the Clouds - When Britains Aircraft Ruled the World' by James Hamilton-Paterson.

Anyone else have it?

Got it reserved at Cambridge central library. The only problem is...I'm sixth on the list, so I'll probably get to read it in the summer. Looks very good indeed.

This Christmas' aviation read is also from the library...'Bomber Command' by Max Hastings. It'll be the third book of his I've read in the last 6 months, the other two being 'Nemesis' and 'Finest Years'.

Chris558 wrote:Just got 'Empire of the Clouds - When Britains Aircraft Ruled the World' by James Hamilton-Paterson.

Anyone else have it?

Yepp, just working my way through it - much of what is said fits in with how I felt growing up in the fifties, but I'd be interested to hear other folks take on the author's view point. It does seem to capture very well how British industry (in this case aviation) lost the plot through that time and how the Government's hand in business didn't help. What I certainly hadn't realised was just how dangerous being a British test pilot was in the fifties! Its so much easier no we can turn crash detect off...

Dangerous indeed John

In those days, the lost of a prototype, or two in often fatal circumstances was almost the norm.

In those day there was only one way to find out and since they were pushing the boundaries any problems often showed up as a complete structual failure of a vital part of the frame or a major lost of control

Brave men indeed.