Vertical Challenge: The Hiller Aircraft Story

by Jay Spenser

Book Overview

"Vertical Challenge" chronicles the most innovative and least remembered of the helicopter industry's pioneering companies. Founded by Stanley Hiller, Jr., Hiller Aircraft produced conventional and ramjet helicopters, flying platforms, and other fascinating flying machines. (Transportation)

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295972033
• ISBN13: 9780295972039
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Age Range: 22 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

If you're interested in the Hiller story, this book is good.

I haven't finished reading this book yet, but have completed several chapters and so cannot offer a complete review as of yet (I had to photocopy the sections I wanted out of a reference book in the library). The incredibly meanspirited review offered previously is clearly from someone with an axe to grind. To say that this book only merits 1 star is absurdly out of line, hostile and defamatory.Although this book does suffer a slight penchant for Hiller hero worship, and it does appear to be an "authorized" biography, it provides the facts of the Hiller story in a generally straightforward manner. Facts that I haven't found anywhere else on arcane subjects such as helicopter tip-jet propulsion and it's fascinating development history at Hiller.And as far as hero worship is concerned, in most aviation circles Hiller is/was widely acknowledged as a brilliant innovator unafraid to pursue what were cutting edge/unproven technologies in the 40's and 50's. So far I've read a section on Tip-jet helicopters that is worth the purchase price of this book alone; from the one man civilan Hornet, to an open framed military gunship, to a proposed gargantuan 300' rotored heavy lifter requested by Von Braun to retrieve his Saturn V boosters, to flying platforms, to tiny collapsible "roto-cycles" to be used as a method of escape for downed pilots in enemy territory.If any of these concepts or ideas intrigue you, and you're at a loss to find information elsewhere (as I was), then snag a copy if you can. I know I'm heading back to the library to copy the rest of the book quicker than you can say "flying shoes" (you'll have to get the book yourself to see what Im talking about!)