Helicopter Theory (Dover Books on Aeronautical Engineering)

I am currently on page 55, this is a informative read.

Wont invest the time to fully understand this book as it's more of an engineers manual than for a pilot (more of a pilot end of the spectrum for me) but is exceedingly insightful from the first paragraph onward. Helps greatly as an instructor for answering or backing up claims about helicopter's physics.

This is an excellent book on the physics of rotorcraft in general and helicopters specifically. This is not about piloting, it is about designing them. There are a few places where they obviously took a photo of the original print edition and used it to crop out some mathematical symbols for certain equations, and apparently missed slightly. Fortunately, there is enough information in the text to help the reader sort out what the equation should be. Also, it is a better love story than "Twilight."

I was able to study in a single book what I wanted to know, such as helicopter flight principles, efficiency, rotor noise, etc. Many other books do not explain the theory properly. This book preserves the classical style, so if you read it slowly you will understand. The only drawback is that it is difficult to carry because it has too many pages. It would help if the publisher would divide it into two or three volumes.

I give 5 stars because I believe it is a great scientific insight on the fluid dynamics and mathematical mechanics whatsoever about the helicopter flight/theory. However, I wanted something general/easier to understand insight about helicopter design, why some decisions in the design process are being favored instead of others etc without the necessity of understanding complicated equations etc. I guess I will just continue to search :)

The ultimate source for helicopter dynamics. Hands down. Only complaint (and a small one for such a voluminous work) is that the current edition's printing doesn't seem as clear and crisp for text or equations as the previous printings. You still won't do any better than this book, however.

Five stars for content, minus two stars for equation rendering quality. As another reviewer has stated, this book is full of equations. Unfortunately, the equations in the Kindle edition are poorly rendered. At first, I was interested enough in the material to overlook this, but after a while, the poor typesetting really started to make the digital edition unreadable. For example, in the attached photo, they are confusing p (pressure) and rho (density) in Bernoulli’s equation. This is extremely disappointing because the content is outstanding overall; it’s a great reference work. The Kindle edition makes what is otherwise a large book extremely convenient to read and use. However, after enduring the poor typesetting of the equations for a few days, I tried to return it, but apparently was outside the return window for digital media. So if you’re considering purchasing the Kindle edition, I would think twice about doing so until they can fix the equation typesetting issues.

Not too much needs to be said. Johnson is an expert in the field and the book is ridiculously thorough. Often overly analytical in terms of reading but this is geared towards engineers for sure. Read this book and understand it: you'll be able to build a helicopter. Sweet, right?