A Scotsman, resident in
Canada since 1996, has just published a mammoth worldwide review of
currently airworthy civil aircraft. Jim Shields, who lives in Ontario
but hails from Inverness, spent nine years researching this massive
tome. The idea sprang from a visit to the Red Deer Airshow in Alberta in
1997 when Jim, a longtime aviation afficiando, photographed a small
homebuilt helicopter which he was unable to identify. Priding himself on
his aircraft identification skills he realized that there was not a
single volume available which illustrated and described all of the
different types and variants of civil aircraft which are currently
airworthy worldwide.
The World's Civil
Aircraft is the result. Containing 571 letter size pages it includes
2900+ entries, 311,000 words of text and is illustrated with 5357
photographs of which 387 are in colour. It is an indispensable work of
reference which includes much new information concerning many aspects of
aviation history. Many of the aircraft types have never been published
before and this book will certainly be an invaluable addition to any
library. Included are agricultural aircraft, airliners, bizjets,
helicopters, powered gliders, gyrocopters, ultralights, homebuilts,
warbirds, production aircraft and replicas.
The book is fully
up-to-date and each entry is illustrated by at least one photograph, the
actual aircraft being identified by its registration and construction
number. The country of origin is followed by the aircraft type,
powerplant, external dimensions, range, cruising speed, and empty and
maximum take-off weights, all in imperial and metric measurements. This
is rounded off by the numbers built to date and a brief description of
the type's history.
Jim acknowledges the
assistance of many contributors to the book, including individuals and
companies from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy,
Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States
without whom the book would have taken much more than nine years to
complete.
More details and
illustrations of The World's Civil Aircraft can be found at,
