
Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying (1944) - JasonFruit
https://archive.org/details/StickAndRudderAnExplanationOfTheArtOfFlying
======
travisjungroth
I have no idea how it ended up on the front page of HN, but this is an amazing
book. Highly recommended for any pilot, especially those flying small
airplanes. Don't let the date scare you, it holds up incredibly well. Wolfgang
figured out how to describe things that good pilots do unconsciously in a way
I've never seen matched.

I'd like to share one passage that because of a small aside in the middle of a
sentence has stuck with me for years.

Of course it is conceivable that a perfectly maintained airplane, perfectly
trimmed and flying in smooth air, might continue to fly straight ahead
indefinitely simply because it would never be disturbed, would never get that
first slight deflection from straight flight which starts the spiraling. But
it is also conceivable that a pencil, stood on its point, might be so
perfectly balanced and so completely shielded from all disturbances that it
would stand on its point indefinitely. Both things are philosophically
possible; both are so highly improbable as to be practically impossible. And
anyway, the stability of a thing, just like that of a man, does not consist in
its being shielded from all disturbances and thus preserving a precarious
balance; it consists in the ability to recover from disturbances that
inevitably will occur, and to regain lost balance.

~~~
hyperpallium
An example from hang gliding: the wings form a shallow "V", with you at the
centre. If it tilts left, there's more lift area downwards on the left (and
less on the right), so it tends to tilt back, righting itself.

I'm not sure what prevents oscillation; nor how pitch is stablized (pointing
downwards vs pointing up), but I've found hang gliders very stable.

~~~
snt
The "projected area" theory is a common misconception of how dihedral works
(that I also subscribed to for many years). All things being equal, the port
and starboard wings create the the same amount of roll torque, no matter which
one is 'facing' the ground better (of course, dihedral does still work,
because all things are not equal).

[https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/26759/how-
does-...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/26759/how-does-the-
dihedral-angle-work)

~~~
dTal
Check out page 126 of Stick And Rudder for an intuitive illustration of why
dihedral works.

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topspin
I'm not a pilot. My father flew small planes for a time and obtained a
commercial license. This is just me reminiscencing about two experiences I've
had as a passenger in small aircraft.

I hopped on a six or eight passenger tour plane operating from the grass field
at Grand Marais Airport in Michigan around 1993. I was in the first row behind
the pilot. There were high, gusty winds off Lake Superior and the pilot had to
really work the yoke and throttle. It was almost athletic; the pilot was
reacting to strong wind gusts -- big deflections of every control surface
every second or two -- and yet the plane felt rock stable; if you had closed
your eyes you could not have known there was this amazing pilot working it
that hard. This went on from the moment he cleared the trees till just before
touchdown. Really astonishing.

Around 2003 I took another flight in a Schweizer sailplane out of Boulder
Municipal Airport in Colorado. I was amused by how the pilot somehow knew
exactly where to find lift. He would deliberately fly along ridge lift,
entering and exiting like there were signs in the sky; never a doubt where to
find it even though the foothills were so far below there was no obvious
correlation between the contours and the lift.

I think piloting is far removed from just about everything else. Non-pilots
don't even suspect things that experienced pilots take for granted.

~~~
upofadown
Gliding is more or less all the stick and rudder stuff with actually staying
up and going places a whole other layer on top.

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HeyLaughingBoy
I don't recall ever reading this book, but as a student pilot, I was given a
copy of "You have 178 seconds to live" and it had a tremendous impact on me.

[https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/fai/...](https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/fai/local_more/alaskan_articles/media/178-Seconds_to_Live.pdf)

~~~
chopin
I do not hold a license but have plenty of simulator experience. Do they not
teach how to use an attitude indicator even for a VFR license? Or how to do an
instrument scan? I thought this is pretty basic. Even with a good forecast,
you can get caught badly by weather. The linked document indicates that
invertion can happen with no visibility, but can't this being prevented bay
paying attention to the attitude indicator.

~~~
unoti
To get a VFR license, yes, you have to know about everything you mentioned.
You must learn about all the instruments. What kind of instrument scans to do
in various kinds of situations. Ascent/descent, climbing turns, level turns
into a heading, etc. VFR pilots do learn about reading the instruments, but at
the same time they learn about the dangers that come with focusing too much on
the instruments— such as not watching for traffic or other awareness issues.
They also must learn a ton about weather.

So a VFR pilot is trained in some of the basic instrument reading things
needed for low visibility flight. But there’s a lot more expertise involved in
safely flying instruments than in visual flight. Precise, mentally demanding
procedures, multitasking. VFR pilots are also required to learn about why
instrument flying is so much more difficult. A big part of the reason is
spatial disorientation[1]. Your senses tell you one thing while the
instruments tell you another. And the scary part is that when the equipment
fails, sometimes it’s your senses that are more correct. Pilots either blindly
following their senses when their senses are wrong, or ignoring their senses
when their instruments are wrong— both of those kill people.

To compare flying in a real small plane versus a simulator: When you go into a
stall in a small plane, the feeling of dropping feels a lot like a roller
coaster, with your stomach coming up into your mouth. That woozy feeling is
much the same. And certain kinds of weather can cause a similar rapid change
in elevation even without you changing the attitude of the plane. The small
plane is so much more (potentially) wild than a big jet, it’s a bit more like
being in a flying lawnmower. A simulator does teach lots of the skills you
need to know, and is especially useful for establishing muscle memory for
things like instrument scans and other procedures. Then doing that in a real
plane is like doing the same thing, but on a wild roller coaster, and with the
full knowledge that if you mess up you’ll die.

You should go for a ride! Tons of places offer very cheap introductory flights
where you get to take the controls for a bit during that first flight.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_disorientation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_disorientation)

------
AceyMan
A true classic; I read (and re-read) the dead-trees version (a library copy,
even!) many moons ago.

A similar and more modern take on these same fundamentals of flight dynamics
titled "See How It Flies" is freely online at
[https://www.av8n.com/how/](https://www.av8n.com/how/) — enthusiastically
recommended.

/Acey

~~~
JasonFruit
I've read through at least half a dozen times, and I'm re-reading it in
preparation for my first real flying lessons. (I'm very excited.)

------
ubermonkey
My understanding is that this book is still basically the bible of aviation.

Of additional potential interest to smart folks who like to read is the fact
that the author's son is of note as well; he's written a lot of really great
long-form journalism, often but not exclusively about aviation as well, both
in high-profile magazines and in book form. He's on the short list of authors
whom I read automatically.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Langewiesche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Langewiesche)

Seek out "The Crash of EgyptAir 990," which ran in the New York Review of
Books in 2002. It's STELLAR, but then his work across the board is especially
solid.

Of his books, I think my favorites are "Inside the Sky," about flight, and
"The Outlaw Sea," about shipping. "The Atomic Bazaar" is also great, if
terrifying.

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mastazi
It's amazing how literally everything in this book is still relevant in 2018,
it really is the bible of flying. Take for example this line:

> The so-called "elevator" is really the airplane's speed control, the
> throttle is really its up-and-down control. This is hard to believe but is
> one of the keys to the art of piloting.

~~~
F00Fbug
That is one of the most important facts about flying; it is also one of the
most misunderstood.

When I read it as a student pilot, I found the book to be oddly written, but
so applicable. That one sentence will do wonders for final approach and
landings!

------
js2
Seems like this might be a good place to link to _The Turn_ (1993):

> At the very heart of winged flight lies the banked turn, a procedure that by
> now seems so routine and familiar that airline passengers appreciate neither
> its elegance and mystery nor its dangerously delusive character. The author,
> a pilot, takes us up into the subject.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.ht...](https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.htm)

~~~
JasonFruit
That is a great article --- he had the knack of making difficult concepts not
only clear but enthralling.

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JKCalhoun
So happy to see a well-illustrated book endure the test of time. I still look
for old texts on science, physics, chemistry ... even (especially?)
electronics.

~~~
travisjungroth
In the chapter on landing, there's a series of illustrations[1] of a giant
building with white and gray horizontal stripes. They're used to show how you
can tell how high you are when landing.

During a ground lesson, I'd show the student the picture and say "of course,
it's not like you'll have a building like that actually next to the runway!."
They'd agree, then I'd point out the window at this building[2], right next to
the runway.

1\. [https://i.imgur.com/i4qlsYQ.png](https://i.imgur.com/i4qlsYQ.png) 2\.
[https://i.imgur.com/vZXZOIp.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/vZXZOIp.jpg)

~~~
escherplex
Hope you teach your new students 'crabbing' techniques during cross-wind
landings before sending them off solo. I remember during one solo cross
country taking-off from a V-shaped private field lined with 50 foot trees,
zero evident or forecast winds, and after second rotation (which just happened
to be at tree-top level) was hit by a cross-wind from the left. Now as we know
it's not particularly healthy to attempt flying sideways 70 feet AGL so full
right rudder was applied until the wings 'bit' and ascent was stable.
Interesting that early exposure to cross-wind landings did trigger that
immediate corrective response.

------
_s
I have a recent hardback version that I lend out to folks interested in flying
or are going through their training.

While not to everyone’s taste, the style of writing is approachable and
distils many somewhat technical concepts (for folks with a poor physics
background) into very easily understandable passages.

The book is centred around on more how to fly an aircraft, rather than how an
aircraft flies, but covers both equally well, and is quiet a refresher in all
the current flight training manuals and regulations that one has to go
through.

------
mcguire
This book is also available as a boxer set with _Weather Flying_ Robert Buck
and _Instrument Flying_ by Taylor.

The first of those is almost as good as _Stick and Rudder_.

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tr352
This is still (after 74 years) a hugely popular book among student pilots to
understand the basics of fling. Technically, very little has changed over all
those years. Popular training and GA aircraft like the Cessna 152/172 are
built and powered in the exact same way as back then.

------
symfoniq
Anybody here fly commercially? I always wanted to, then 9/11 happened in my
18th year and caused a lost decade for the aviation industry. Thinking about a
mid-life career change now, but it’s going to be a very expensive endeavor.

~~~
bronco21016
It is definitely an expensive road but the regional level pay has gotten much
better. The regional I just left was paying new pilots upwards of $55,000
first year. As a junior captain I left making around $120,000. Probably
nothing among a crowd of software devs but far above the $23,000 I made my
first year, 7 years ago.

If you already have a 4 year degree and a relatively stable financial
situation then I’d say go for it! Major airlines are hiring like crazy and
just about anyone without skeletons in their closet should be working for a
major over the next 10 years because of mandatory retirement.

~~~
mpweiher
Great to hear that they solved the "mystery" of the lack of new pilots (paying
a living wage helps...)

------
kazinator
Even if the content of this book were bunk, I'd still conclude that this
author is great. Good reading for anyone who wants to write an instruction
manual for anything.

------
airwebster
this is a good compliment to Stick and Rudder:
[https://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Taildragger-Pilot-Harvey-
Plo...](https://www.amazon.com/Compleat-Taildragger-Pilot-Harvey-
Plourde/dp/0963913700/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528950509&sr=8-1&keywords=the+compleat+taildragger+pilot)
if you are interested in getting into actual "stick and rudder" flying -
tailwheel flying (while a bit of a dying art) is kind of key for all test,
aerobatic, bush, and most "fun" types of flying where your "involved" with the
machine

~~~
blendo
If you’re in the SF Bay Area, Palo Alto airport has several clubs offering
primary flight training in the Citabria 7ECA
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Champion_Citabria](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Champion_Citabria)).
Student in the front, instructor in the back (and out of your line of sight),
right hand on the stick between your knees, and left hand on the throttle.
Tailwheel. 1120 lbs empty weight.

Thrilling.

An intro flight will cost about $200.

------
magicbuzz
In my bookshelf. I think that the most fundamental statement in Stick & Rudder
is that you are flying a Wing. And a Wing is something that is inherently non-
intuitive to most human beings.

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hudibras
Hate to be that guy, but I'm pretty sure this book is still under copyright;
the author passed away in 2002. HN is probably not the right place to post
this...

