Weather Flying Description:

Weather Flying review:
5 stars ("The sky is my office") - It is hard to imagine a pilot with more weather flying experience than Captain Robert Buck. And much of this flying was in the old days: in the early years of the Army Air Corp and a young company called TWA. Much of this flying was accomplished without the assistance of modern instrumentation. Captain Buck travelled the world seeking the most ornery weather he could find, and then flew into it time and time again, compiling the experience and collecting the data that no one else had at the time. Captain Buck shares that experience here. This book is interesting and engaging to the flying enthusiast, essential to the VFR pilot, and absolutely priceless to the aspiring instrument pilot. Every discipline and every pastime has its classics, and WEATHER FLYING is, without a doubt, one of the classics of aviation.



The language of WEATHER FLYING is simple and straightforward. The lessons are practical more than theoretical, though Captain Buck keeps his readers briefed on essential weather theory as well. Virtually every weather situation that a pilot can encounter is covered in this book, from the ordinary to the exotic. Then Captain Buck instructs you how to fly it. The concept is simple and direct; the lessons are comprehensive and pragmatic.



In short, this is not a book to read once and then shelve. The lessons are too important to be forgotten. This is a manual to be taken down and read over and over again by any sort of pilot who flies any sort of aircraft.



Jeremy W. Forstadt
4 stars (weather is confusing...) - ... and will remain so after you read this book. Everything in Buck's book is useful but it is tough to remember all of his rules without a solid grounding in meteorology. The cover's subtitle "a practical book on flying in all kinds of weather" is accurate. This book is about practice, not theory. However, after finishing the book, I was disappointed to find myself as ignorant as ever about weather and completely at the mercy of the FAA briefers.
5 stars (My favorite instrument flying primer.) - I got my instrument rating 25 years ago, and Buck's Weather Flying recommendations are still fresh and pertinent. A friend just shared that she is going to tackle an instrument rating, and Weather Flying came to mind as the perfect gift to make a safe pilot. I still use his practical recommendations in my infrequent IFR flights, and feel that it has contributed to making me a safer pilot. Sorry if this sounds a bit corny, but few books have stuck with me like this. PS: If you're interested, try T.R. Fehrenbach's "The Reckoning" or "This Kind of War" if you want something that will also stick with you through life.Tom