Introduction
Whether you’re a novice or have some experience with sectional charts, this guide offers a crash course to enhance your skills. Dive into the intricacies of sectional charts, learn about the legend, margins, and get acquainted with various symbols that will aid your navigation.
About the Host
Heather Monthie, a commercial pilot and flight instructor, has been deeply involved in STEM education and workforce development for over two decades. She brings a wealth of knowledge as the founder of Electric Monarch Drones and Educators Who Drone.
VFR Sectional Charts Overview
The FAA provides VFR raster charts on its website. These charts, available for various cities, are large files that can be downloaded for practice. However, for ease of use, platforms like SkyVector are recommended. Keeping track of the edition dates is essential as well as ensuring you’re using the most current version.
Reading the Legend and Margins
The legend and margins of a sectional chart are treasure troves of information. These sections provide a comprehensive overview, from control tower frequencies to special use airspace details. Platforms like SkyVector seamlessly integrate these charts, making it easier for pilots to access and interpret the data.
Airport Information
The shape and symbols associated with an airport on the chart can provide a wealth of information. From understanding if the airport has a paved runway to knowing if there’s fuel available, these symbols are crucial for pilots. The chart also details the airport’s elevation, runway length, and other essential data.
Conclusion
Reading sectional charts is an art and a skill. Understanding these charts is crucial whether you’re preparing for an exam or planning a flight. Remember, always consult the legend, margins, and ensure you’re using the most up-to-date version of the chart.
Additional Resources:
Full Transcript:
How to Read sectional charts. This video, I’m going to give you a crash course on some tips for reading a sectional chart like a pro. So whether you are just getting started using sectional charts and you’re completely confused, or maybe you’ve had some experience reading sectional charts, but you’re still unsure and not very competent with using sectional charts, this is going to be a crash course to get you on your way for reading sectional charts like a pro. So what I’m going to do is go over a little bit about myself who I am as a person, this person hosting this video my name is Heather Monthie. And we’re going to go over VFR sectional charts overview. We’re going to go over about reading the legend and the margins of your chart. We’ll talk about airport information, we’ll talk about latitude and longitude. Identifying airspace, this is not a full airspace course, we’re going to do a quick review on airspace so that you can learn how to identify it on sectional charts. Then we’ll talk about obstacles and terrain. So first, my name is Heather. I am a commercial pilot certificate in flight instructor CFI. In a remote pilot, I am very involved in STEM education and workforce development I’ve been that’s been my entire career over the last 20 plus years. I’m the founder of phi alpha Zulu aviation education and also educators who drone and I am also the host of the let’s learn to fly podcast. So let’s get to it. VFR sectional charts overview. So the FAA has a spot on their website for the VFR raster charts is what they call them. So you can go to this link here, or you can just type into Google, FAA VFR raster charts, and this link will come right up. And this is where you can get the official images have VFR sectional charts, depending on which city you want to grab, or which chart you want to grab. So these files are huge. Um, you can download them, you can use them to practice, you know, taking a look at things on the internet, that kind of thing. I do recommend using skyvector, it seems to be a little bit easier to use. And you don’t have to spend all the time downloading these files. But if you wanted to download the files, and find the official chart of the FAA, this is where to get it. And you’ll see here that they’ve got the current edition date, and then the next edition date. So if it’s within 20 days of the next release, there will be a next addition link available for you as well. So for example, if you’re going to download the Albuquerque chart, you know, today is October 25 2022, you would use this current edition because we’re between September 8 and November 3. So it’s important to note that November 3, this is the chart that will go live. Okay. And the aim, the Aeronautical Information Manual, chapter nine does go over aeronautical charts and related publications. I’ve got a link for you here. It’s got all of the information that you need to know about different types of charts that are available. So there’s all sorts of different charts, there’s sectional aeronautical charts, VFR terminal area charts, there’s the Gulf Coast VFR aeronautical chart, there’s the Grand Canyon VFR aeronautical chart, there’s all these different charts. Okay. Well, we’re gonna go over today are sectional aeronautical charts, so we’re not going to go over some of these other ones. And that will be in a in a later video here. But for this purposes, we’re going to go over just the sectional charts, because that’s already a lot of information. So again, there’s other types of VFR charts. There’s a terminal area charts, there’s the Gulf Coast, VFR charts, the Grand Canyon, Caribbean, and then there’s the helicopter route charts. The charts are updated every 56 days. Again, you can see the dates here, we’ve got September 8, and November 3, if you’re watching this video at a later time, those dates are going to be different, just check the link to see what is the most current version for you on that particular day. They’re updated every 56 days, and they’re updated every one year in Alaska, they always are valid and expire on a Thursday, that’s sort of the release schedule for the VFR sectional charts. But if anything needs to change within those 56 days, they the FAA will either update information via a NOTAM or a safety alert and charting notice. So the NOTAM is going to be more
you know more pertinent information that you need to know right away it’s going to affect you in flight versus the safety alert and charting notice is going to be things like maybe things are spelled incorrectly or something is something is just incorrect on the chart, but it’s not necessarily going to affect your flight. And you could find that information here as well. But if anything is going to affect your flight, something major changes. There’s a new obstacle put in place such as a water tower light, you know, a light is out on a obstacle, something like that. It will be updated by a note um, so you want to make sure that you’re always checking NOTAMs so I’ve got a link
here to skyvector. If you haven’t used skyvector, yet, it’s a fantastic website that gives you all of the charts and they sort of seen them all together. So that it This looks like one big map for you. But you can also look at the individual charts. So you can actually look at the margins and the legends which I will show you how to use that here in a second.
So my next statement here is that you want to make sure that it’s I like to say it is this, read the darn chart, make sure you are reading the chart that you are looking at, there’s all sorts of information right on the chart for you. So if you are either taking a written exam, or maybe you are in the middle of your checkride, and you get a question and you can’t answer it, you find a question about a sectional chart and you can’t answer it. Read the legend, read the margins, read the darn chart. So there is a book that you will get one second here. This is the book that you will get as part of your written exam and see if you can bring it in here in the camera. There we go. It’s your airman knowledge testing supplement, okay, and this is valid for sport pilot, recreational pilot, remote pilot and private pilot. This is the actual document or book that you will receive during your written exam. So if you are taking a look at some of the VFR sectional charts in this book.
So again, you got some of the it’s hard to see here with my Zoom sorry.
But you can see here, this is page two dash 75 You could get questions about that particular chart on your written exam, okay, if you are taking the sport pilot, recreational pilot, remote pilot, private pilot, okay, so you want to go through this book and look at all the different charts, look at all the different diagrams that are in there, you could get you can will get questions on them.
You can also download that online, I’ve got a whole separate video on my YouTube channel that actually explains how to use that testing supplement. But we’re not going to go over that today, we’re going to go over how to actually use the charts. Okay, so the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure that you read the legend and the margins. So let’s go over to Sky vector right now. So I bring up sky vector here. And it’s just skyvector.com. And like you can see here, it brings all of the aeronautical charts together. So I’ve got the whole United States here, okay. And it looks like we’ve got some weather, and then probably some TFRs here as well. So we’ve got a couple of things you can you can set things up. So that shows what you want to see what you don’t want to see I’ve got TFRs on you can actually bring up the weather, you can bring up all the meet ours and TAFs as well. So you can hover over here and see the different weather reports gets a little cluttered, so I’m going to shut off the TFRs and the weather information. Trump’s assigments too. So what you can do here is you can zoom in on your particular area that you are flying and so what I always suggest is to in order to start learning sectionals, find an area of the country that you are already very familiar with, okay. It just makes it a lot easier that you’re not trying to identify new things. Okay? So I’m going to use Oshkosh Wisconsin, okay. Mostly because that’s actually where I learned how to fly. But a lot of pilots know about Oshkosh, there’s obviously air ventures there. So we’re going to take a look at the Oshkosh airport, Appleton, Green Bay, new Holstein, this whole area. Okay. Many of you have maybe been to Oshkosh, you’re familiar with this area. But when you’re learning how to use sectional charts, I always suggest using your neck of the woods that you’re going to, you’re going to know things you’re going to know the railroad tracks, you’re going to know the names of some of these checkpoints, you’re going to know the names of some of these airports. Alright. So you can see here on skyvector, I’m on the world VFR charts. So the world VFR chart is got everything. It’s all it’s taken. If you had all of the printed charts, it’s seaming them all together into one big chart. Okay. So Oshkosh in an app, this area right here is actually the cut off between the Chicago and the Green Bay sectionals. So if I bring out just the Chicago sectional here,
you can see that, you know, Oshkosh Appleton is right on the border there. If I go back to the world VFR and scroll up just a little bit, I go now I have options to bring up the Green Bay sectional and the Chicago sectional. So if I bring up the Green Bay sectional again, you can see Oshkosh is right on the border. So there’s a little bit of an overlap between the two sectionals here. All right. So for this purpose, we’re going to use the green let’s use the Chicago sectional. So in order to bring up the chart, all I do is I just click on the name of the city for the chart. So this one is the Chicago
sectional.
And why, if I zoom out, you can see that it’s this is the actual chart and what it looks like when it’s a printed document. So if you’re actually ordered the paper charts, this is what it would look like it would be, it’s pretty big, you know, maybe, I don’t know, maybe three feet by four feet or so these are pretty big documents when you get them in the printed version. And so it’s very important to look at the legend, and the margins. And so I’m talking about the margins, here’s all this information in the margins of the chart. So you’re gonna want to read through all of that. And we’re gonna go over some of these in this video here. But this right here is going to be the legend. So if you think back to, you know, elementary school, when you were first learning how to read charts, or read maps, you always had a legend, there’s always symbols on maps, and then the symbols are always defined in the legend, okay. And the reason for this is because if you were to write all of these things out on the map, or on the chart, it’s going to clutter it up, and it’s going to make it very difficult to find anything. Okay, then, so we’re gonna go over that in a little bit, a little bit more detail in a little while. So then over here in the margins of the chart, I’ve got control tower frequencies on the Chicago sectional chart, so any control tower that there if there’s a controlled airport with a control tower, it will have the, the name of the airport, the hours of operations, and then the tower ground and Adas frequencies. So you can look that up here. So if you think about this, if you are a pilot flying an airplane, and you’ve got a printed copy of the chart, you’ve got all this information, you know, right there with you. So when I was first learning how to fly, this is all manual you had everything was, you know, analog, we printed everything up. So we would have charts and put them on our knee boards, and you fold everything up. So if you were to need additional information about an airport that maybe you weren’t intending to go to maybe there’s weather, maybe there’s, you have a fuel situation, something like this, you can come right to the margins of the chart to get the airport frequencies that that you need. Okay. And then we’ve got some information about the special use airspace that are that’s on the Chicago sectional chart. So we’ve got some restricted areas indicated by the R here. And it tells you up to what altitude is the restricted area, the time of use, and then the controlling agency or the contact facility. So if you needed to get a hold of Minneapolis center, they give you then the frequency that you can use to contact Minneapolis center about that particular restricted area. All right. And then you’ve got the names of any boys that are on the sectional chart. So on the Chicago sectional, we’ve got you know, Hirsi hilltop. How are these Howard Westman? Oh, Prudhoe Bay. There’s all these different Molas that are on the charts. So military operating areas, it tells you up to what altitude is the MOA. And then it gives you the time of use, and the controlling agency facility, and then the frequencies that you can contact somebody to get some guidance or get some more information about it. So now it’s always important to remember that these Mo was, you know, say that this is from like this one right here, 12 on East as 09 100 to 30 minutes after sunset Monday through Saturday, it’s important to know that there could be times outside of that publish timeline that that mole could be in use, and that is going to be available to you via NOTAM. Then right here, we’ve got some information about maximum elevation figures. So this is going to be an elevation that when we talk about latitude and longitude, you’ve got these different quadrants, it creates these quadrants, where inside that particular quadrant, that’s going to be the maximum altitude of the highest obstacle in that particular quadrant. So for example, right here, we’ve got this two seven right here. So in this quadrant, right here of latitude and longitude in that quadrant, 2700 feet is going to be the highest obstacle in that particular quadrant. Then you’ve got some information here about flight following services and NORAD procedures. You know, flight following services are available on request and highly recommended in and around Class B, C, and Teresa areas. So there is a Teresa on the Chicago sectional
right here
and this is the only one that I know of in the US. I could be wrong. There could be more but this is the only one that I’m aware of is the Rockford tussah. So TR says a special use airspace. It’s a class Delta airspace with radar services. And so it’s going to be identified here by this
by this the gray circles but you’ve also got the blue dashed lines to indicate that is class Delta airspace there. So this is what’s got some information there for you
With that, then if you come over here to the left margin, again, we’ve got the legend, then you’ve got this would be the cover if you were to have this printed up, and, you know, fold it up, this is what the cover would look like it tells you that is the Chicago sectional. It’s effective on eight, September 2022, to three November 2022. And then a reminder to consult NOTAMs to make sure that you have the latest information. Then this diagram right here tells you all the different VFR sectional charts and sort of you know where this one fits in. So we’ve got the Chicago sectional here. And then it tells you which particular what are the major cities that have VFR terminal charts. So this magenta is going to be any cities that have the VFR terminal area charts that you can you can get as well, I’m not going to go over that today. But that is some information for you there as well.
Then we’ve got a Milwaukee right here. So Milwaukee is doesn’t have a Terminal Area Chart. But it does have some congested airspace. So they’ve provided this little area here, that things can be zoomed in. So if we go look at Milwaukee on the chart itself, right here
it’s it’s a very congested area, but it doesn’t want a Terminal Area Chart. So we’ve got this thing right here. Milwaukee instance sees see inset chart for additional detail. That is this right here. So you come over here and it’s zoomed in. And so you can get a little bit more detail. We’ve got the walker shot airport, the Lawrence Timmerman airport, Milwaukee airport, there’s a lot of stuff happening in this airspace here, we got some transition areas, all this kind of stuff. So they wanted to be able to give you a little bit more detail. And so you can find that there.
Then we’ve got just some more information here about you know, just how to plot direct routes, things like that, that you can read through there. Then we’ve got information about different military training routes that there might be IFR, and VFR military training routes. We’ve got conversion of elevations from feet to meters.
And then caution about severe turbulence, we’ve got just a few notes because it looks like champagne here is right on the border. So we’ve got a few notes that cross over into the margins here. Then we’ve also got a statement here it says unmanned aircraft systems UAS may be approved to operate above critical infrastructure, including obstacles and linear features, such as high voltage power lines, pipelines and railroad. So it’s important for you to know as a manned aircraft pilot, that there could be drones operating over these facilities doing some sort of surveying. Okay, so to make sure there’s a reminder here to check the NOTAM. And the aim for some details. So we’ve just got some information here, you know, tells us here that it’s joining the St. Louis and Cincinnati charts down here, we’ve also got an Indianapolis inset that you can see on the St. Louis chart. So all sorts of really good information for you on the on the margins of the chart. So when I say that you need to read the legend and read the margins. It’s this get very familiar with all of the different control towers and all the different laws and all the different restricted airspace, prohibited airspace, special use airspace that’s in your neck of the woods, make sure that you’re very aware of it, but then also don’t get complacent with it. Because if when you fly in a certain area, very frequently, you start to get a little, you might start to get a little complacent about some of the airspace in the in the airspace rules in your area. And so you don’t want to have that happen. So you want to make sure that you’re staying up to date with you know, frequencies,
any sort of, you know, any sort of procedures, things like that, you want to make sure that you are staying up to date. And don’t get complacent. So you want to make sure that you read the legend and the margins, read the darn chart. Okay.
So next here, so let’s go over the legend a little bit. So next, here we have the airport information. Okay, so now we’re looking at this one here as the is the Green Bay sectional. And so airports are going to be either they’re going to be color coded, but then they also have different shapes for different things. And again, this is to show you because if you are in a airplane and you’re flying along and you need to get airport information, again, you should have all the airport information for your destination airport and your alternate airport if you need one. But it may happen that weather comes in and you’ve got to land somewhere else. Okay? So when you’re in the airplane, it’s very difficult to you know, get out you know, your facilities directory, get out some of this other information and try to find all this information so they try to put as much information as what you would need in the airplane, on the legend or on the chart itself. So you can figure out here that based on the shape of the airport, if it is paved or not, if it’s a seaplane if the runway length is greater than 1069 feet, if there
isn’t a vor vor DME DME or Vortech, you can figure all that out just by the shape of the airport. So for example, you know, just this plain circle here is going to be, it’s something not hard surface, so probably grass, gravel, dirt, something like that, then you’ve got a seaplane base, then you’ve got this the circle with the runways in their runway or runways, you’ve got a hard surface runway 1500 feet to 8069 feet in length. So there’s at least one one runway that is at least 1500 feet up to 1069 feet. Then, if you’ve got where it’s just sort of the runways are outlined here, the hard surface runways, you’re going to have something greater than 1069 feet or multiple runways less than 1069 feet. And then when you’ve got this open dot here, it’s going to indicate that it is a hard surface runway that you’re going to have perhaps some radio aids to navigation. So that is what you can tell by the airport shape. Okay, then you’ve got the circle are for the private airports, you’ve got the double circles for the military airports, hello Paheli reports. unverified, they’re just not certain exactly what type of surface that is. You may be having abandoned airport and ultralight parks. So this also indicates when you’ve got these ticks right here. And this is a question that I think I got this on my oral exam for my private pilot is what are these ticks mean? And so that’s going to tell you that there’s fuel available at that particular airport, but that you should consult the chart supplement, because
you there may not be fuel available at all all the time, it may not be a 24 hour service. So you want to make sure that you know exactly when you’re going to be able to get get fuel. So we’ve got the star here indicates that there is an operate rotating airport beacon that operates sunset to sunrise.
And objectionable means that airport may adversely affect airspace use.
So if we go over here to the airport data, so when we’re actually looking at the airport, so if we come back over here to our chart, I’m going to
go back over here, we’re going to use Oshkosh again, okay, so if I come over here, I’ve got the shape of the runway. So I know that I’ve got multiple runways or a one runway at least 1069 feet, I’ve got an operating beacon.
And then I’ve got all this information about the actual airport itself. Okay, so we’re gonna go over what some of these symbols mean, and then we’ll come back over here and decipher this.
So we’re always going to have
the name of the airport, you’re going to have the identifier, the ICAO identifier, you’re going to have if there’s no special VFR allowed, it’s going to tell you that here. You’re going to have the control tower frequency.
Then you’ve got let’s see, the star indicates that the opp is operates part time, so it’s not necessarily a 24 hour control tower. Then you’ve got the C Taff information. So see the circle see here follows the common traffic advisory frequency or C TAF. So you’ve got ADA. So see TAF and Adas is going to be one two 3.8. In this particular example here, you’ve got the runway length.
Sorry, you got the airport elevation, then you’ve got the runway length, then you’ve got the Unicom frequency. This tells you if you have a right pattern, you might see that here, RPS for right pattern, and then you’ve got your VFR advisory frequency, one, two 5.0 There might be a weather camera in Alaska and then there might be an airport of Entry information. So those are the types of things that you might see on a chart with regards to airport information. Okay, so if we come over here and look at Oshkosh, we’ve got the Wittman Regional Airport. Oh sh is the ICAO identifier control tower is one one 8.5. It’s operates part time and operates we’ve got C Taff and eight is that one to 5.9. The elevation of the airport is 808. The length of the longest runway is 8000 feet, and then our Unicom frequency is one to 2.95. And then we’ve got information here about the Vortech as well, so that’s going to be right below that’s going to be for this
this sort of circle right here. Okay. So that is the type of information that you will see on the airport, airport data. So, we just went over Oshkosh, so I’m not going to I’m going to skip over this slide here. Then now let’s talk about latitude and longitude. So what I alluded to earlier is that you’ve got the the minimum elevation in each case
hydrant on the
on the chart. So you can and will get questions on your written exam on how to identify latitude and longitude on a chart. So latitude and longitude are going to be these black marks, these black tick marks right here is latitude and longitude. So let’s go over you can’t really tell what the lat longs are right here because they don’t have enough information on this screengrab. So if we come over here to skyvector, again,
let’s go there we go. So we come over here to skyvector. Again, you can see I’ve got the, you know, the black lines right here. And
you got to get to just look for these, these black numbers here to figure out what is your latitude and longitude. So right here, we were at 80 degrees. So that’s what this line of latitude is here.
I’m sorry, this line of longitude is right here. And then we come over here, and we’ve got another line with no number on it. And then we come over here, we’ve got a line that says 89 degrees. So this is going to be 89. This is going to be 80 degrees, 30 minutes, and then this is 88 degrees. Okay. And then right here, we’ve got 44 degrees, a line of latitude.
And then we have to go a little bit north here to see where’s the next line? Right here is the next line right here, there’s no number on it,
then zoom out just a little bit.
And then we’ve got 45 degrees. So we’ve got 44, down here, 44 degrees, 30 minutes, then 45 degrees. Okay, so that’s the, the larger sort of, you know, framework for latitude and longitude. But then what you want to do is, you know, you might get a question on your exam that says something like, what is the latitude and longitude of the plant? Right here? Okay. So the question is going to be, can you decipher these tick marks to be able to figure out what the lat longs are for that particular plant. So if we know that this is 44 degrees, 30 minutes, this is 45 degrees, each one of these tick marks is one, so 123456 or so. So six, below six degrees, six minutes less than 45. So that’s going to be 44 minutes and 54 seconds north, okay. And then we’re between the 88, and 89. So the 88 to 88 minutes, 30 seconds, we can either count forward, or we can count backwards again, 1-234-567-8910 11, so 10, or 11. So probably about 80 degrees, 20 minutes, West is what that’s going to be. So you, each one of these tick marks is going to be one minute. So you can either count up from 88 degrees, or you can count backwards from 80 degrees, 30 minutes, whichever way works for you. But you will probably get questions about that on on your written exam. And then so when we were talking earlier about the minimum elevation, we’ve got these, this quadrant right here. So your lines of latitude and longitude, create this quadrant, alright. And so within this quadrant, the highest obstacle is 2000 feet. Okay? So you can kind of see if you can take a look around and see if you can figure out what it might be there’s a tower, some sort of tower here at 1100 feet, 1300 feet, but that would give you stay at 2000 feet or above that will give you clearance over the highest obstacle in that particular
quadrant. So not as big of a deal in flat Wisconsin, you get towers,
you’ll get water towers, radio towers, that kind of stuff. It’s much more of a bigger deal when you get over to this side of the country where you’ve got mountains. All right. And so if I zoom in here on Arizona,
you know, you’ve got some that are 70 280 406,000 feet, 4700 feet. So you can see that you’ve got, you know, the Phoenix Valley here that’s much lower 3500 feet,
you know, all the way up on the other side of the valley is 8000 feet. All right. So, you know, there’s there’s going to be some some obstacles in the way in the shape of mountains. So that’s going to be valuable information for you, especially if you’re flying at night.
So that is latitude and longitude. Now, let’s talk a little bit about airspace. Let’s do a very, very, very quick review of airspace, so that we can learn how to identify airspace on the VFR sectional charts. So the National Airspace System it’s going to be any of the airspace navigation facilities and airports in the United States that some of them are shared jointly with the US military. There’s controlled and uncontrolled airspace. There’s six different airspace classes. There’s special use airspace.
As there’s other airspace, each airspace is going to have geographical boundaries that are going to be the most of them are going to be defined here on the chart. Each airspace has its own weather minimums, and it has federal guidelines and regulations. So what is controlled airspace versus uncontrolled airspace so controlled airspace is going to B airspace where there are air traffic control services. Alright, so it’s different from towered and non towered, so you’re going to have towered airports and non towered airports, a non towered airport can still be in controlled airspace, okay. It’s just that does air traffic control provide services doesn’t mean air traffic control needs to be on that airport. Okay, the level of service is going to depend on the class of airspace, and an uncontrolled airspace is air traffic control services are not provided at all. And again, just because an airport doesn’t have a control tower, it doesn’t mean that it’s non controlled. Okay, so the, the lack of a control tower does not mean it’s an uncontrolled airport. So this is just a quick review of the sort of upside down wedding cake diagram in that from the AME that shows all the different types of airspace. So you’ve got Class D here, which is really sort of just your your like silo, you know, cylinder shape, then you’ve got your class C, which is going to come you know, start here at the surface, but then it’s going to branch out as you get up higher and altitude. And then you’ve got class B, which has got that additional layer on top of what you would normally see on Class C, then you’ve got Class G airspace down here towards the ground, and in other parts, maybe outside of the outside of the borders of the country might come up a little bit higher. And then everything else in here is where we’ve got our class E or class echo airspace, and then from 18,000 feet MSL to flight level 600 is where we’ve got our class alpha airspace. So that’s just a very quick reminder of the different types of airspace. So not going to go into a whole lot of details here. But what is special use airspace so we’ve got a couple different types of special user space that you’re going to see on sectional charts, you’re going to see prohibited areas, restricted areas, warning areas, Moa alert areas and controlled firing areas. Extra control firing areas you’re not going to see on sectional charts, but it is a part of special use airspace. There’s also no drone zones, local airport advisories, military training routes TFRs. There’s permanent ones, there’s temporary ones even though it’s called the temporary flight restriction, there are permanent TFRs out there any sort of parachute operations VFR routes, terraces SF RAS special your traffic rules, weather reconnaissance areas, national security areas, the aid is and then the the freeze that you see around Washington DC.
So let’s talk about how to actually identify airspace on the VFR sectional charts. So you’ve got your legend. So again, if you cannot remember, come over to your legend, to look and see what they’re trying to tell you here. A solid blue line Class B airspace solid magenta line class Charlie airspace, dotted or dashed blue line class Delta airspace. This is the box with the number in it. The ceiling of class Delta airspace in hundreds of feet. A minus ceiling value indicates surface up to but not including that value. Okay? So if you see a minus in front of it, and you’ll see this around some very congested airspace, we’ll say you know the class Delta airspace goes up to but not including 4000 feet because at 4000 feet, you’ve transitioned into class delta or I’m sorry, class Charlie, your class Bravo airspace. Okay, the dotted magenta line is a surface transition for class echo airspace. You’ve got the class E airspace with the floor at 700 feet above the surface that laterally abuts Class G airspace that’s going to be the shaded magenta lines, Class E airspace with floor 700 feet above the surface that laterally buts 1200 feet or higher class E airspace and then you’re going to see the shaded blue line that says class echo airspace with the floor at 1200 feet or greater above the surface that laterally abuts Class G or class Gulf airspace, okay? And then you might see these sort of, you know these interlocking lines here, one that says 2400 MSL one that says 4500 MSL that’s going to differentiate the floors of class echo airspace greater than 700 feet above the surface. So any sort of class echo airspace that extends that’s going to give us some more information about where that class echo airspace actually is. Okay? Then you’ve got some routes that are going to be identified here. So we’ve got like right here, we’ve got this federal airway. It’s a VFR route that shows that it’s at 130 degrees.
132 degrees is the direction it’s a victor. See
39 is the name of the victor airway. And then the total mileage between the nav aids on the direct airways 169 mileage between those particular nav aids. And then we’ve got some information here about some of the nav aids that might be used on that Victor airway.
Then you’ve got the dashed lines here that show the prohibited restricted and warning areas. You’ve got this, this shows the, the magenta color shows the Molas. Then you’ve got the slanted lines, which indicate the blue slanted lines indicate the special air traffic area airport traffic areas. And then you’ve got the slanted magenta lines, which is the National Defense temporary flight restriction area. That’s you’re gonna see that around the freeze, you’ve got the eight is which is the air defense identification zone, you’ve got a mode C veil that you’ll see around class Bravo airspace mode, C veil, and ADSP out, you’ve got a national security area, a Teresa, and then a military training route is going to be identified, excuse me identified in the
light shaded green. So let’s go over to the chart.
Okay, so again, we’re gonna go back to this area,
there’s not a whole heck of a lot happening here.
So it’s pretty simple. We’ve got our class Charlie airspace here on Green Bay.
Solid magenta line.
The inner circle goes from the surface to 4700 feet. The outer circle starts at 1900 feet and goes to 4700 feet. Okay, so the tops of the class Charlie airspace, 4700 feet, if you’re at 4750 4800, you are above the class Charlie airspace. Okay? Got Victor airway here. It’s at 204. And the victor airway connects between
the Green Bay vor and the Oshkosh vor. Alright, so you’ve got that information there. Then you’ve got the class Delta airport, the blue dotted line,
all the way up to 3400 feet up to and including 3400 feet. Now again, if you see that negative it means it’s up to but not including 3400 feet, that might be a question you might see on your oral exam.
Then if we come over here, we’ve got the shaded area where the class E airspace transitions down to 700 feet AGL. If you come up here
Rhinelander airport here, you’ve got the transition area right here. But you’ve also got the Class II surface transition area right here as well, where the class echo airspace actually drops all the way down to the ground. And so that’s where you’ll see that dotted magenta line there.
Okay, um, let’s go over to
Maryland, and the Washington DC area, we could do a whole session on just understanding the airspace in the Washington DC area. Okay, so we’re not going to go into too much detail here. But you can see the restricted areas here.
We’ve got the prohibited area indicated right here we’ve got a restricted area as well the restricted area or realize the prohibited area.
We’ve got the let’s see are
the Washington DC metropolitan areas special flight rules area flight restricted zone, DC, fr, SF RA and DC freeze sea description in Atlantic Ocean, okay. So if I come over here to the Atlantic Ocean,
we got a whole description here, where it tells you exactly what you need to do and what you need to follow all the different positions of the DC freeze and DCS fra. Okay, you can see we’ve got the flight restricted zone right here, around DC proper. We’ve got some prohibited areas here that’s going to be around, you know, the Pentagon, the White House, that kind of stuff is right there. But then you’ve got this special flight rules area right here. This is sort of the the gate that is for that particular area, you need to have permission need to be on a flight plan, there needs to be special training that you have to do to enter that particular space. Again, we could we could spend an entire hour just talking about that type of airspace. Okay. Then if you come over here to the borders of the country, this is where you’re going to see that Class II transition areas. And then you’re also going to see the contiguous contiguous eight is contiguous us eight is so you can see how they are depicted right on the charts. So that is how you’re going to identify some of the different types of airspace. So if we come back up here,
what you really want to do
Rule is now that you’ve gone through the legend of your chart, you know what all the different symbols mean, you can go through and you can spend some time studying the chart of the area that you fly in the area that you live in the area that you know very well, the year that you grew up. It might not even be where you live in where you’re flying. It might be the area that you grew up in, you just know it very well. Okay, you just know that area. I know where New London is. I’ve been to New London. I know what it is. I know Shiocton airport, I know that they’re very active with skydivers there. All right. I know, I know who the wings with halos guys are. I know the Oh, the new new Holstein airport very well. I know, this railroad track. I know this railroad track very well. I know exactly where it is. I know this highway. This is highway 10. All right, I know that highway, I drive it. I know like pogon I voted on like coin. Okay, so you can start picking out different landmarks different things that you identify that you just you already know. And then when you start looking around and you’re like, I don’t know what that is, I don’t know what that means.
Then that’s when you start doing some investigating. So for example, Denmark over here, Denmark is underlined, in black, underlined with a magenta
flag there. Maybe I don’t remember what that flag means. Okay, what are we going to do? We’re going to go look at
the margins, we’re going to look at the legend and see if we can find that
flag, see where it is. Look at this.
Right, here’s the flag, okay, actually doesn’t even tell you exactly what it is here.
It’s probably not the best example. But the flag is going to tell you what that particular checkpoint is that if you tell air traffic control, that I am over Denmark, they’re going to know what that means. They’re going to know okay, you are right over this lice or this
railroad track over Denmark. Okay, they’re gonna know exactly what you mean. You tell Green Bay approach that your renew Franken, they know what that is. You talk to Green Bay approach your Dixville they know what that is. Okay? Come down here to Madison.
Same thing, tell them that I’m at Columbus.
They know what that means. I’m at Cambridge, they know what that means. I’m in Oregon, they know what that means. Okay, so those are checkpoints that you can use, right? But my point here is, take an area and get to know it, learn it, and learn it from the perspective of when you are up in the air. Because some of these things are gonna be things like okay, yeah, I know exactly what that is. I did get a question once of if you can get sectional charts that have roads overlaid on them? And the answer is no. And it’s like there’s no like sort of, you know, API or anything to integrate with Google, Google Maps, things like that, if that’s going to just
add way too much clutter to the chart, and it’s just going to be too much. Okay. But if you notice, though, like there’s some major highways here, like this is highway 41. That goes from Oshkosh to Milwaukee. So they’re gonna put major highways here, but they’re not going to have all the different roads and everything that maybe you’re familiar with, because when you’re in the air, you sometimes you might not even be able to see those roads, sometimes they’re so narrow, you don’t even see them. But second of all, it’s really just going to start cluttering up your, your chart so you
you’re not going to get that.
So okay, so Class A airspace. We talked about a little bit about Class A airspace Class A airspace, you are not going to see on VFR sectional charts, because it starts at 18,000, feet MSL up to flight level 600. So you just you’re not it’s just not charted, you’re just not going to have it on there. Class Bravo airspace. Again, you’re going to see this is Chicago here, you’re going to see the blue, solid blue line here. Okay, we’ve got a couple of different rings. So we’ve got here.
Our inner ring here, then we’ve got our first ring is neck starts at 1900 feet up to 10,000 feet, our inner ring a surface to 10,000 feet. We’ve got to cut out of the ring right here because we’ve got an airport right there. Okay, so this is a good example right here where the class Delta airspace goes up to, but not including 3000 feet.
up to but not including 3000 feet. Well, that’s what that little minus sign means there. Okay. Outside of that, we’re in our ring at 2500 feet, starts our class Bravo airspace up to 10,000 feet. The next ring here we’ve got 3600 feet to 10,000 feet, but you see this line right here? That means
There is, there’s another line right here. That means that inside this particular spot right here, this the the lower level of the class Bravo airspace is at 4000 feet. Okay? So right here, if you’re flying along at, you know, 3700 feet thinking you’re not in the class Bravo airspace, and then you come over here, you’re in Algonquin, and you’re at 3700 feet. Now you’re in the class Bravo airspace. Okay.
And then, as you come out more, you’ve got 4000 feet to 10,000 feet. And again, we’ve got this full circle here. And same thing that kind of butts out here, this 4000 to 10,000 kind of fills in right there. Okay, so we’ve got another class Delta airport here goes up to 3200 feet. So if you’re flying along, right here, you’re not in the class B, we’re probably at 3200 feet, you’re not in any you’re not in the class Bravo, 3200 feet, you’re at class Delta, 3200 feet, you’re, you’re below the class, bravo. All right.
So and then you’ve got the mode, C veil and the ADSP out so within 30 nautical miles, that indicates that you need to have a mode C, and ATSB out to be there. So even if you’re not intending to enter the class Bravo airspace, you do need to have that functionality on your airport or on your plane.
Then you’ve got the class Charlie airport, airspace. Here, Milwaukee is a good example. We’ve got the solid magenta lines surface to 4700 feet 1900 to 440 700 feet. And it’s pretty simple. There’s just too simple.
You got we got our simple modems. Let me take that back. So it looks like on the shoreline here is where we’ve got a transition area. So if you’re over the water, in this second circle here, 1900 to 4700 feet is the class Charlie. But then if you’re over the land, the class Charlie actually starts at 2200 feet. So the class Charlie starts a little bit lower when you’re actually over the water. All right, we’ve got our checkpoints. You can contact Milwaukee approach Tom here at Muskego Lake, you got Hales Corners. They know what all those those checkpoints are the filtration, filtration plant, that kind of thing. You could tell them. I’m 10 miles north of the filtration plant. They know what that means. All right. Then you’ve got the information about that particular airport. You’ve got some information about some obstacles. We’ve got a stack right here.
We’ve got a soft field right here. We’ve got the Waukesha County Airport right here. We’ve got the Timmerman airport right here. So you can see here we’ve got class Delta overlapping
the
the class, Charlie airspace right here. Okay. So the class Class delta goes up to 3200 feet. All right, so we’re operating up to 3200 feet. Right here, Walkinshaw goes up to 3400 feet.
Then class Delta airspace airspace. The blue dotted lines here indicates its class Delta airspace. We’ve got a checkpoint in here, you can tell that to air traffic control, they’ll know exactly what you’re talking about. If you’re at Fisk, like Buda more, the warbird Island. These are used a lot obviously, because of the airshow these checkpoints are used a lot. But even if you are just flying into Oshkosh any other time of the year, you can use these checkpoints. And they certainly know what that means.
Then we’ve already gone over Rhinelander. But we’ve got this class ease surface transition area here that’s identified by those dotted magenta lines.
And then Class G is you’re not gonna have anything around it. It’s you know, it’s we’ve got this Iron County Airport here. It’s a class in Class G airspace there.
Then we’ve talked about minimum elevation and that particular number there, then you’ve got different obstructions. So the obstructions are going to be the you got different shapes for the obstructions, depending on the height of the obstruction, and so 1000 feet or higher, above 200 feet, but it’s below 1000 feet. That’s the different reason for the different for the different shapes of the obstruction. One thing it is important to note is that a lot of
tower towers can have these guy wires that can extend outward from the structures. That’s really important. Because if you are doing an off field landing and you’re coming close to a tower, you need to be aware that there could be those guy wires coming off of that off that tower.
And then terrain. So terrain like I showed you with Arizona, it can be much more much different than just flying over a flat Wisconsin, right so when you’re looking at areas where there could be different mountains and different types of you know, hilly terrain or mountainous terrain, you’re gonna look at a couple of things. You can look at these contour lines right here. So we’ve got this contour line right here is 3500 feet 3500 feet, here’s one at 3000 feet
So the closer they are together, the steeper that terrain is going to be, the farther apart they are, obviously, the less steep it’s going to be that the on the incline, but then you’ve got the different color coding here that will tell you what is the what is the highest elevation in that particular area. So again, if we zoom this out, let’s go take a look at Arizona
we’ve got California that area here. But you can see that we’ve got some darker browns here that indicates that we’re at a the terrain is at a much higher altitude. So if I zoom in here,
read 10,000 feet on this line of contour 9000 feet right here at 500 feet. So we’re getting, we’re getting pretty steep these, these, these contour lines are getting very, very, very close. So that tells me that there there’s going to be mountains here. And so again, if I look at this quadrant right here, within this quadrant, the highest obstacles at 13,300 feet. So if I stay above 13,300 feet, I should be okay with clearance from any obstacles including mountains, in this particular quadrant, on the VFR sectional chart.
Alright, so that is a very, very, very quick rundown on VFR sectional charts a lot of information on them, I showed you, just a couple of the highlights of them were to find more information, read the margins, read the legend, use that information and just read the darn chart, look at it, see if you can figure it out that way. So here are a few of my social media accounts that you can connect with me on I’ve got a Facebook group, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, a YouTube channel, and you can find a lot of other really great helpful educational information in all of those different places. So I hope this video was helpful for you as you are trying to learn how to use and read VFR sectional charts. And please stay tuned I will be making a lot more of these types of videos either for my YouTube channel or for my Aviation Academy, where you will get to learn some of these more topics, these topics in much more detail. So thank you and I’ll see you in the next class.
