In 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm made the first trans-Pacific flight in the Southern Cross - an aircraft constructed largely of wood and fabric. They made the trip from Oakland, California, in nine days, during which they faced electrical storms, torrential rain, equipment failure, and fuel shortages. Navigational aids were primitive - contact with the outside world was by Morse code only - and safety measures were non-existent. After many close calls, they triumphantly landed in Brisbane, where a crowd of 15,000 welcomed them as heroes. Throughout this extraordinary journey, Ulm kept a logbook in which he recorded his raw impressions of the flight. Using Ulm's logbook, plus contemporary newspaper accounts and official documents, Flying the Southern Cross tells the gripping tale of this history-making flight, and the aviators who made it happen.

Travel writer Robin Liston and publisher and amateur pilot Rory McAuliffe conceived the idea of visiting twenty six outback places beginning with the letters A to Z. This book tells of their exciting journey.

Concise field guide to stars and constellations presented in a month-by-month selection of stars charts. Explains celestial phenomena, workings. A gem.

The life story and career of the pioneering Australian pilot.

This a story of pioneers, intrepid aviators, adventurers, tycoons and innovators. It is also a story of dedication and determination, for despite fixed-wing aircraft proving their value over the battlefields of the Western Front during the First World War, convincing governments and public alike that they had a role in peacetime proved far more challenging. The Americans, as inventors of heavier-than-air powered flight, had briefly courted with a passenger airline across Tampa Bay in 1914, yet it took a further nine years for mail to be flown coast-to-coast. In 1919 a British company made the first international scheduled flight between London and Paris, but the continuation of regular services was thwarted by a less-than-enthusiastic government that allowed its generously subsidised French competition, for a short time at least, to fly cross-Channel passenger schedules unimpeded. The British eventually realzed that fast links with their Empire were vital, followed the example of the French and Dutch who had forged air links with their cousins in North Africa and the Far East. Meanwhile, in South America, the Germans, forbidden under the Versailles Treaty from any major aircraft-building, were establishing cunning supremacy by forming airlines throughout South America and in China. While America awaited a transcontinental passenger service, Juan Trippe's Pan American Airways was crossing swords with Ralph O'Neill of New York, Rio & Buenos Aires Line (NYRBA) for air supremacy between the US, Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere in Latin America that led to the formation of arguably the world's greatest airline. In Russia, Igor Sikorsky had built a vast passenger-carrying aircraft, the Il'ya Muromets, and politicians debated whether giant airships or fixed-wing aircraft should rule the skies _ an issue that was put firmly to bed when the mighty German airship Hindenburg exploded while mooring at Lakehurst in 1937. Robert BluffieldÍs highly researched and detailed account tells the dramatic stories of explorers such as Kingsford Smith, Lindbergh and Cobham, and flamboyant entrepreneurs, some well known, others forgotten, who risked fortunes and reputations to follow their dreams of reaching and ruling the skies over empires, continents and oceans. Against bewildering adversity, corruption, underhanded deals and dwindling resources, these tenacious individuals braved the elements using primitive, entirely unsuitable equipment to establish earth-shrinking aerial services that criss-crossed the great oceans and the globe's most inhospitable territories. These are the stories of those pioneers _ of A_ropostale, CNAC, Air Orient, Imperial Airways, KLM, Deutsche Luft Hansa, Pan Am, SCADTA, The Condor Syndicat, Qantas and others that had a far-reaching impact on the way the modern world would travel.

Jessica Mackay has one dream - to be a pilot. Jessica lives on her family farm at Narromine, New South Wales, in the 1920s - the best place for a would-be pilot. Her father developed a passion for flying in Egypt during World War I, and Narromine lies close to the heart of Australia's budding aviation industry. Even though women were among the first people to take on the challenge of the skies, Jessica's ambitions are not supported by everyone, most notably her grandfather who has firm ideas about 'a woman's place' in the world. As a junior member of the new Narromine Aero Club, Jessica is well-placed to meet pioneer aviators such as the legendary Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, as well as take part in the first Narromine Air Shows. Jennifer Bradley's story of a young girl's passion for flying is based firmly on actual events in the fledgling Australian aviation industry.