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The Triumph of Instrument Flight: A Retrospective in the Century of U.S. Aviation ISBN 0966625137 Cover price $18.95; 335 pages, 6x9 format. Indexed. From the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss to the speed/endurance records of the 1920s and early 1930s. Those proved the airframes, the engines, and the pilots.The technical breakthrough for instrument flying came in the 1920s, but the pilot interface, putting the pilot in the 'loop,' took a bit more time. The already famed Jimmy Doolittle made a blind flight out of Mitchell Field, with a safety pilot aboard. Then, the Lockheed 10A Electra instrument panel, with Sperry's gyro instruments, became the essential cluster for instrument flying. Blind landings would come later.

Author Franklyn E. Dailey Jr. is available for discussion before you buy, or after you buy. E-mail: franklyn21@earthlink.net

No obligation.

Be sure and ask the author for the change to the Sirius aircraft instrument panel made after Charles and Anne Lindbergh's flight to the Orient. This proved to author Franklyn E. Dailey Jr. that Anne Lindbergh's description in her "North to the Orient" book, of the hair raising attempts that Charles made to get down on the water, through heavy cloud cover, alongside the mountainous Kurile island chain, were contact flight efforts and not instrument flight efforts.

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Can be ordered from Barnes & Noble, Borders, and other retail bookstores. Mention ISBN 0966625137

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