Paolo Miana's "L'ala di gabbiano con la finezza di uno Stradivario"

 "Seagull wing with the finesse of a Stradivarius"

Book review by Gabriel Stern on Oct 14 2008

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One of the many appeals of the Golden Era of Aviation is its powerful Mystique.
The mystique involved in discovering, records, exploration and technical achievements that gave us a better, deeper understanding of our world and its wonders.
A special chapter in this thrilling time is about record flights.
Mr. Miana’s book describes the context of the period and focuses in the machine, crew and circumstances of the record flights of the Savoia S.64.
The book is a very thorough research effort accompanied by extensive photographic documentation, charts, maps, schematics, etc; skillfully balancing written and graphic contents.
Although the text is in Italian, if that’s not your language, you can still get a sense of its meaning thanks to the abundant visual material.
Fellow modeler Chris B.R. stated once that as soon as you are finished with a model (especially a scratch-built one) of which not much is around in terms of information, chances are that a new source will surface exactly after you have finished it. Well, I am still happy I built my 1/72 S.64
http://www.internetmodeler.com/2007/july/aviation/S64.php
although with this book I could have done much, much better.
Anyway, by now you may have discovered that I am partial to this plane and the Golden Era of Aviation, which is populated by a plethora of very exciting subjects.
Mr. Miana’s book is 16,5 x 23,5 ctms. (or roughly 6 ½ by 9 ¼ inches), soft cover and about 80 pages crammed with information. The images are black and white.
The chapters are as follows:
-Introduction
-SIAI is born
-The political-historical context in the inter-war period
-The technological level of aeronautic construction of the Italian industry
-Plane description
-Engine
-The S.64 takes to the air
-The Montecello airstrip
-Close-circuit distance and endurance record
-Maximum duration flight technique
-Preparations for the enterprise
-Ferrarin and Del Prete improve the record
-Maximum distance flight technique
-Destination: Brazil
-The second endurance record
-The Maddalena, Cecconi and Del Monte incident
-Similar planes
-Conclusions
-Bibliography
-Archival material
 
Mr. Miana can be reach
ed at www.avioebooks.com

Click on images below to see larger images

  

Photos and text © by Gabriel Stern