General Dynamics F-16XL: An Illustrated History

Lots to like in this book and the actual layout/images and text are good. I do expect better paper quality at this price point.I doubt this book will have the longevity is should for the money. Sorry folks.

I was so looking forward to this book, and clearly, the Author, Tony Landis has as always put so much effort into this book. It is as expected, packed with illustrations, diagrams, and mainly photographs. There are few pages of text, but the story of the XL is told through the abundance of photos and the captions that accompany them.I'd quite happily have given this book a top-star rating, but the fact that this is so heavily reliant on photographs, the reproduction has to be at least okay at best. Unfortunately, all that hard work of the author has been lost in the reproduction of this book. This is clearly a print-on-demand product, and I don't have issues with that compared to traditionally printed books of the same nature. However, the reproduction of this book is one of the worst print-on-demand books I've seen, especially for the price of the book.Every page has lines running through the images, both colour and black and white. My photos of the pages don't really do it justice. It's as if it's been printed on a home printer which needs its heads cleaning and the ink is running out. Many of the images seem to be out of focus too, and seem to be printed at a low resolution. If it was the odd page one could live with it, but the entire book is like this and it ruins the experience.I feel I'm getting the words, but the major content of the book, the pictures are just not good at all. I've asked to return the book and hopefully, I will happily buy it again if the quality issues are resolved.

Research

This book is theILLUSTRATED F-16XL BIBLE covering manufacturer development, USAF testing and NASA research in the 1990!The book shows THOUSANDS of pictures with very detailed picture captions and description, but it is as I said before an illustrated book and text, other than detailed picture description is scarce!There is an unbelievable amount of non gloss, but still well printed pictures about the F-16XL in this book, wich can not be found anywhere else. This Book tells the F-16XL from concept, to USAF testing to the final years with NASA ... IN DETAIL! An illustrated deep dive into the jet's history. The book is published by USAF itself and is worth every penny !!A book for historians, students, engeneers, F-16 nerds and people who love aviation in general.MAKE SURE TO ALSO BUY the NASA PUBLISHED F-16XL book by Albert C.Piccoirillo, with hundreds of pages full of detailed text and few pictures, to have the complete USAF and NASA story about the F-16XL! This book can also be found as a free PDF download on NASA.gov

A recommander sans modération pour les amateurs de prototypes. Des tonnes de photos inédites. Attention toutefois, il s'agit d'un PDF imprimé par amazon, donc la qualité n'est pas celle d'un livre d'édition, mais le sujet en vaut la peine !

This is an excellent photo history of the F-16XL delta-winged fighter prototype built by General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin). The F-16XL was an improved delta-wing variant of the "Viper", the impressive F-16 Fighter Falcon. Though not chosen for production, the XL had a notable career conducting research flights for NASA after its original contractor and AF testing.This book by the incomparable Tony Landis is done in a format similar to the old Warbird Tech book series and "Scrapbook" series books from Specialty Press. As such, while this is a photo chronicle, Tony Landis manages to tell the story through the well-written captions that accompany these photos (drawn from Air Force archives). This is the F-16XL's storyIt should be noted that this is a Print On Demand (POD) book. But while earlier reviews complained about print and paper quality, as an avid reader, I found no issues to report regarding this book.I enjoyed it thoroughly and I highly recommend it.

After downloading the PDF, I needed a hardcopy of this book for my collection. With over 1,000 photos, it was definitely worth the cover price. The copy I received looked very good for print-on-demand. If you're a fan of the F-16XL, you should grab this one while you can.