Bruce Carmichael's "drag reduction" book

[Tom Nalevanko]

Glad to help out....

Happy New Year,

Tom

 

[TerryM76]

I checked with our Experimental Sailplane Association (ESA) and Bruce sells that book directly but we do have his biography available.

Terry
ESA secretary

 

[karoliina.t.salminen]

I have this book. Got it from Aircraft Spruce when it was still available.

Assuming that matrix printer quality does not bother you and you value the content more, go get this book while you still can.

 

[SpainCub]

Hi, anyone know if these books are still available. It's not available for AS any longer.

 

[Apollo]

Hi, anyone know if these books are still available. It's not available for AS any longer.

See posts # 18 and #20 above. If you're not in the USA, you should call him to verify the price. I believe he's getting up there in age, so order it now before it's no longer available.

 

[autoreply]

I lost/lent out my copy of "personal aircraft drag reduction" somehow. Anyone who knows whether they're still available somewhere or how to contact Bruce Carmichael?

 

[TerryM76]

I lost/lent out my copy of "personal aircraft drag reduction" somehow. Anyone who knows whether they're still available somewhere or how to contact Bruce Carmichael?

Please see attached copy of latest ESA newsletter. Contact information for Bruce is in the Classifieds section.

Terry

View attachment ESAMay15Ltr.pdf

 

[mike_t_12]

I ordered both of his books (reviewed in the first post of this thread) a few days ago. You will reach Bruce directly if you call the contact number listed in the ESA newsletter.
Mike

 

[PW_Plack]

Instead of having anxiety over the typography and endangered availability, maybe we should approach authors of works such as this and offer to digitize them? A dot-matrix printer is old-school, but optical character recongnition should buzz through it with ease.

If I was selling only a few copies a year and had a chance to go digital and quit stuffing books in my trunk, I'd be willing to take a smaller income per-book, if only to see all my hard work survive.

 

[Marc Bourget]

Won't OCR handle dot matrix font styles?

mjb

 

[autoreply]

Please see attached copy of latest ESA newsletter. Contact information for Bruce is in the Classifieds section.

Terry

View attachment 40465

Thanks!

It mentions some "books" I hadn't heard about before. Any doubling-up where some books are doubling others, or are they all pretty unique?

Instead of having anxiety over the typography and endangered availability, maybe we should approach authors of works such as this and offer to digitize them? A dot-matrix printer is old-school, but optical character recongnition should buzz through it with ease.

If I was selling only a few copies a year and had a chance to go digital and quit stuffing books in my trunk, I'd be willing to take a smaller income per-book, if only to see all my hard work survive.

This has been discussed before, see up. Never taken off. It'd sure be a monumental loss once they're out of print given the advanced age or passing of some of the authors.

 

[Rick Frost]

I've been looking without success for a copy of Carmichael's book Personal Aircraft Drag Reduction for about six months. Would anyone here be willing to make a xerox copy of one of the more recent editions for me? I know its a hassle, and I will of course pay the costs and something for your trouble. Or, if you are a really trusting soul and are willing to lend me your book, I'll do the xeroxing myself and return the book.

 

[Norman]

Did you contact Andy Kecskes? He's the president of TWITT and editor of the ESA newsletter. If anybody knows how to get it it would be him.

 

[autoreply]

Thanks!

It mentions some "books" I hadn't heard about before. Any doubling-up where some books are doubling others, or are they all pretty unique?


This has been discussed before, see up. Never taken off. It'd sure be a monumental loss once they're out of print given the advanced age or passing of some of the authors.

Anybody who knows that?

 

[Jay Kempf]

Anybody who knows that?

I think there is some overlap with Hoerner.

I heard/read somewhere that Bruce Charmichael's wife was still reproducing his book. Can't find the reference anymore. I do know that the email that was in the ESA newsletter for a long time doesn't work anymore.

I really like the drag estimation information on the stanford.edu website but I just tried to find links and the site is down. Hope not permanently.

 

[lr27]

I've got Carmichael's drag reduction book. A lot of good info, but the presentation can be difficult, and some of the graphs would be a lot easier to read with a better print job. The book contains MANY references, it's almost a bibliography. I had forgotten, but it's a couple of hundred pages long, so I think the price is reasonable.

I've also got The Collected Sailplane Articles and Soaring Misadventures of Bruce Carmichael 1950-2000. This is, for the most part, more accessible. Content ranges from anecdotes to design studies to more technical articles. Another Carmichael publication, which I don't think has been mentioned earlier in this thread, is Ultralight and Light Self Launching Sailplanes. This is a brief survey of what was available in airframes and engines, plus some discussion of the technical issues, performance, etc. It's much shorter than the other two. The printing is not so great. Probably useful if you're going to design, build, or buy one of these. Also, if you're like me, for entertainment.

A couple of other interesting publications are The Collected Works of Stan Hall and The Collected Works of Stan Hall -Volume Two. Mostly articles written by Stan Hall, many of which discuss homebuilding, and mostly about sailplanes. Hall is the designer of the popular Cherokee II homebuilt sailplane and built several of his own designs. Like the Misadventures book, there are a number of anecdotes.

 

[plncraze]

You can always do an interlibrary loan for these books. Also if you have an engineering library at a college you could try that.

 

[llemon]

Did you contact Andy Kecskes? He's the president of TWITT and editor of the ESA newsletter. If anybody knows how to get it it would be him.

I tried contacting this person through the email address listed on the ESA website and that email is no longer active. Does anyone know of another source for purchasing Carmichaels books?

 

[J Galt]

I have been looking as well, the books are available on ebay sometimes for $100+. There's a .pdf of one of them on the net but I think it was more an article he wrote than a book.
Justin

 

[GeorgeG]

I've found lots and lots of books and manuscripts at Scribd.
They've got a wealth of knowledge.