Overview

The story goes that I badly wanted to write a book about one of the greatest passions in my life: fyling! I wanted to write a book that would convince other engineers like me to take the challenge and live the dream learn to fly and become private pilots. However, I knew the few hours of actual flying experience I had did not qualify me as a credible expert on the art of flying. So when I had an opportunity to write a book about Microchip's new 16-bit PIC24 microcontrollers, I just could not resist the temptation to join the two things, programming and flying, in one project. After all, learning to fly means following a well-structured process a journey that allows you to acquire new capabilities and push beyond your limits. It gradually takes you through a number of both theoretical and practical subjects, and culminates with the delivery of the private pilot license. The pilot license, though, is really just the beginning of a whole new adventure a license to learn, as they say. This compares very well to the process of learning new programming skills, or learning to take advantage of the capabilities of a new microcontroller architecture.

Throughout the book, I will make brief parallels between the two worlds and in the references for each chapter I will add, here and there, some suggestions for reading about flying. I hope I will stimulate your curiosity and, if you happen to have this dream inside you, I will give...