Richard L. Taylor (1) (1933–2018)

Explains the principles of flight and provides instruction in the actual mechanics of flying an airplane.
A real understanding of the principles of flight and the operations associated with flying the way it's done today — this book deals with these important basics as they apply to practical matters in the cockpit. How well you handle the airplane depends largely on your knowledge of what's happening and your understanding of the laws of aerodynamics. This book will help you avoid guesswork and put you in touch with true professional skills and attitudes. Beginning pilots can absorb new pieces of knowledge and experienced aviators can gain insight to improve their proficiency. "Understanding Flying" will give something practical to every pilot, and provide dozens of maximum-performance fine points for high-time fliers:

The airplane — how it flies, what affects performance, loading, and propulsion systems.
Flying the airplane — takeoffs and landings, flight instruments, weather, navigation, and flying when you can't see outside.
The airspace — all about airports and rules of the air.
The pilot — certification and staying current, psychological factors and emergencies.… (más)

Continued VFR into IFR conditions persists as the most frequent cause of weather-related accidents. This book provides the bare-bones essentials of instrument flying technique and procedures so urgently needed in order to cope with and survive an inadvertent encounter with low-visibility IFR conditions.
For this "IFR survival guide," Richard Taylor has adapted the key lifesaving elements of IFR discipline to the average VFR pilot's capabilities. Here are complete instructions in a simplified "hands-off" flying technique that minimizes the risks of loss of control when outside visual clues are lost. The physiological causes of spatial disorientation are explained, giving valuable insights into IFR's most treacherous aspect. A chapter contributed by noted pscyhologist and flight instructor Dr. Jerald Cockrell tells how to control fear and panic in the cockpit.
Should air traffic control assistance be necessary, IFR for VFR Pilots tells how to communicate effectively and how to use ATC to fly out of a low-visibility predicament. The book guides you step-by-step through the essential procedures of DF steers, radar vectors, and other ATC "assists." VOR and DF fixes, VOR approaches, low-visibility landing technique, even the missed approach, are clearly explained with typical Taylor expertise.
IFR for VFR Pilots is a must for all fair-weather fliers, however proficient and cautious they may be. Its no-nonsense approach has a lot to say to the seasoned instrument-rated pilot as well.… (más)

This book is super outdated. The first few chapters on aerodynamics and flight instruments are of course timeless, but I'm willing to bet that any pilot worth her certificate has already read this stuff in the PHAK, Stick and Rudder, or countless other books on aerodynamics and introductory flight information. Weather phenomena haven't changed either, but you're likely to have read all about those in another textbook, or experienced them firsthand, already.

GPS wasn't in wide use when this book was published, and the VOR system in the US is getting slowly dismantled, so the navigation section isn't terribly useful.

Information about weather services and weather briefings would be outdated in a book that's 5 years old. The second edition of this book is 21 years old, so I completely glossed over the section about weather services.

The airspace section of this book obviously doesn't use the new classification of US airspace considering that it was dramatically changed in the late 1990s. You won't find information about class A, class B, etc. in here because it just didn't exist yet.

Also, there's a section on flying taildraggers. Since this book was first published in the 1970s, a pilot needs an endorsement to fly a taildragger as PIC as of FAR 61.31 (i). I'm not sure if that was addressed in the second edition (the book was published in 1992) because by this point, I wasn't really reading but skimming the book.

So just leave this book to accumulate dust on the library shelves and grab something more recent and relevant instead.… (más)