Dudley Henriques wrote:


All of these books are good, each in it's own way.
.............
I have believed for many moons that there exists in General Aviation a
totally unnecessary trend toward the macho image for the GA pilot.

That's an interesting observation. I've read Kerschner, the Jepp books and
Gleim. In the Jepp's for example, I see strong sections on good
aeronautical decision-making.

In both chapter 1 and chapter 10, they discuss "Hazardous Attitudes", and
list (among others):

Anti-authority
Invulnerability
and
Macho.

And discuss them in some depth.

So at least in the initial training (Chapter 1) this sort of attitude is
discouraged.

None of my instructors were of the macho sort. Especially the female ones.
All of them were professional, patient and supportive.

I would never argue that the macho image doesn't exist in GA at all, nor
that there aren't macho instructors or even FBO owners. But I've not seen
it at a level such that it would act as a barrier to people wanting to
learn to fly.

I haven't read Machado's book but I read his articles and Q&A sections in
the AOPA mags and I like his style very much. So I imagine his book is
pretty good. One *can* overdo humor in such a book - some is good but like
anything else one can go overboard. Whether Machado has or not I cannot
say.

As for avoiding highly technical engineering explanations, I see the books
trying hard to do that all along. For example, I have observed that in some
cases the books simplify to the point of telling you what, but not why. In
one case (Jepp - Commercial and Instrument) they will tell you that an
increased AOA on a propeller blade results in an increase of the load on
the engine..but they don't say why.

The best attempt I saw at satisfying the varying complexity level desires of
different folks is "The Compleat Taildragger Pilot". There, they gave the
lighter version in the text. But if you really wanted the heavy vector math
they provided it in the back of the book.

G