Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book gives a detailed account of the history and long, long, evolution of the instrument landing system in use today. I would not call this a literary work; it does not read with a building sense of tension or excitement like a novel, though it could. The nature of the subject itself for any reader that is a pilot, high-mileage airline passenger, or aviation aficionado will fill in the suspense left out in the factual recounting of events.
The goal of the participants from the very beginning was to achieve `blind landings'; to have the aircraft wheels literally touch the ground without the aid of any visual cues outside of the cockpit (thus the title of the book). A goal that remains, even in today's computer driven world.
What IS amazing is the amount and sometimes the pace of the system's evolution that was dependent all too often on purely political or business decisions; not science, and not technology, as an outsider would presume. This is not always the story of science, government, and business working together to solve a common problem, though it did occur. The airlines, driven by the need to fill vacant seats and make a profit, pushed (and paid for themselves, in some cases) for adoption of any system that would improve the opportunity for a scheduled flight to reach its destination in inclement weather, even if that improvement was only incremental.
Conway is to be applauded for the amount of history he has been able to amass, particularly on the early efforts towards this goal, and his extremely methodical and meticulous discussion.
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