Dublin:

I was an engineer in college, so I have some natural geek-leanings, and I read a lot of technical stuff for fun or curiosity. The Air Force covered this pretty well too in academics, but ironically, the best text they issued was

Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators

I believe you can buy this direct from the Naval Printing Office. It was written at least 40, maybe 50 years ago, but it is outstanding. Google it and I'm sure you can find either a new one or used one. I still have mine!!

They had us use these in college:

Low Speed Aerodynamics
Bertin: Aerodynamics for Engineers

High Speed Aerodynamics
John D. Anderson: Fundamentals of Aerodynamics

These are industrial strength aero books and you will not be able to make use of them without taking some courses to help make clear what they are talking about. If you do however, they will become your favorite books on the subject.

If you want a nice summary of the subject without the prickly math then Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators is what you need.

If you really do not have time for even that much, FAA has a shallow treatment of aerodynamics in its Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge . This is really as shallow as you can get, but at least it's considered more or less true as far as it goes.

Not to brag, but the professor I had for senior design in aerospace undergrad school co-authored part of the Bertin book. You are more willing to sweat the details when you actually know the author.

Thanks guys! I saw a version by ASA (not the airline) that I think is a reprint of the original one. I saw the reviews and the consumers though the original was better, so I hunted a little more and found it on amazon - and bought it!

I also bought "Mental Math for Pilots." I think it will be a good review, and help me to learn some new tricks perhaps. I don't want to get too reliant on automation and forget everything I've learned.

I also found some other good books that I might be interested in purchasing such as "Handling the Big Jets," and a couple theory of flight books. I may purchase those later on. Like I said, I just want to make sure I'm a good captain one day, and getting there means working to become a better pilot as an FO now. I'm excited about the Naval Aviators book!

That's awesome! Thanks guys!!!!

Dublin:

I salute you for having the initiative to go beyond what the training manual or FOM requires you to know. You're on the right path to be a great Captain someday.

I'm sorry I forgot to answer this. I have 3 climb profiles I use - 250/.70, 290/.74, and 320/.77. They are all certified for use up to 410 (depending on weight).

I have noticed that if you get slow at altitude, it can take quite a bit of time and power to get back up. I can easily go from .77 to .82ish, but to get from .70 to .77 can take even longer. I noticed this recently, I let the airplane get slow for some reason, and I wasn't watching it due to some distraction, and i had to pop it back into climb thrust to get it back to where it should be. It just didn't want to speed up.

And thanks! As much as I think it's important to learn about this stuff, I enjoy it too. If you guys think of anything else that I might enjoy reading, always feel free to pass the ideas along!

If you're familiar with the power-curve, you are citing it and the oft-quoted "backside of the power curve" in your acceleration example.

It sounds like L/D max coincided with about M0.74 or 0.75 and some indicated speed (the true L/D relationship requires both IAS and Mach; the Mach portion can be ignored at low mach numbers but becomes much more apparent at high-altitude). Therefore, it is actually draggier below 0.74---and takes longer to accelerate---from .70 to .77 than .77 to .82.

The backside of the curve gets very steep, very quickly...much more so than the front-side of the curve, until you start getting close to the critical Mach number...then it, too, gets very steep, very fast.

The high-speed chapter of your new book should explain this in layman's terms. Cubdriver's engineering texts would require linear equations and Laplace transforms, which made even my head hurt 25 years ago!