About SkyVector:
SkyVector is a visual tool essential for remote pilots to determine if they can fly in certain types of airspace safely and legally.
The tool is color-coded and provides lots of information on airspace and airports that pilots need to understand.
Using SkyVector:
SkyVector.com is a free website that compiles VFR sectionals from across the U.S.
The site provides a visual representation of the country, allowing pilots to assess airspace, weather conditions, and potential hazards.
The website also displays weather reporting stations, TAFs (Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts), and TFRs (Temporary Flight Restrictions).
Navigating the Sectionals:
The sectionals are color-coded based on elevation, with different colors representing different height levels.
The FAA Aeronautical Chart User’s Guide provides a detailed breakdown of these colors.
The sectionals also display various symbols representing airports, obstructions, and other essential information.
The margins of the sectionals contain valuable data for pilots, including tower frequencies, military training routes, and elevation details.
Conclusion:
SkyVector is an invaluable tool for remote pilots, offering a wealth of information on VFR charts.
Download your FAA Part 107 Study Guide here: https://offers.flyelectricmonarch.com/studyguide
How to Use SkyVector for Drone Pilots
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Discover drones is your go to resource for learning about drones, drones in business, emerging drone technology and drones in STEM education. I am Dr. Heather Monthie, an FAA certificated flight instructor, commercial pilot, remote pilot and dedicated stem educator. Join us as we discover more about drone safety, urban Air Mobility, business and education. Let’s get started.
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Hello, and welcome back to the Discover drones podcast. I’m Heather Monthie, your host for this podcast. We are here already in episode six of the podcast. In this episode where I’m going to do is talk a little bit about how to use skyvector as a remote pilot. So fair warning here. This is a pre free preview of my course understanding airspace and VFR sectionals for remote pilots. This is a video based course for good reason. skyvector and some of the other tools are very visual based tools that you need to be To know how to use as a remote pilot to be able to determine if you can fly in certain types of airspace, safely and legally from the FAA perspective. skyvector is one of those tools that is it’s very visual, it’s very, it’s color coded. It’s got all sorts of different information on there that you need to know how to use. But what I’m doing is I’m sharing in this podcast, I’m sharing the audio from that video, so that you can just get sort of a free preview of what is covered in that video, I do urge you to go to my website and check out the actual video I’ve given you the actual video that’s in the course, you can go to the link in the show notes at fly electric monarch comm and search for skyvector or just go to the link in the show notes. And it will come right up for you and then you can watch the actual video you can see what I mean about how this is this is very much sky vectors. It’s a visual tool. You’ve got it you’ve got to see it but I wanted to share with you the audio that you can just have a listen learn a little bit and you just see what’s happening in that particular course and see if it’s something that you might be interested in. I also want to encourage you to download my FAA part 107 study guide, it is free, the FAA has put together all sorts of different information to help you pass the part 107 exam. What I did is I just put it all together into one ebook, all the different links, you need all the different documents, you need that kind of thing. So if you go to fly electric monarch comm slash FAA part 107 test prep, you can download that PDF guide. And then if you are looking for somebody to really guide you much more through all the different materials that are needed to study for that exam, you will be added to my mailing list and so when my part 107 course is available, you will be the first to be notified that it’s available, along with a nice little discount. So you can go to fly electric monarch comm slash FAA part 107 test prep and I will We’ll link to that in the show notes. And also make sure to check out discover drones podcast comm to check out other episodes in this podcast. So let’s get started with how to use sky vector as a remote pilot
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how to use skyvector for drone pilots so this video I’m going to show you everything you need to know about sky vector as a drone pilot to get you going and learning how to read those VFR sectionals. So the first thing you’re going to do is go over here to Sky vector.com. This is a free website that you can use that takes all the different VFR sectionals throughout the United States and put them all together into one. So it you can see the whole country laid out right here on your computer screen. Okay, so what I can do now is I am just looking around at the country and I can take just a glance at what’s going on in the country. So there’s some weather overlay data here that we can take a look at So looks to me like there’s something probably going on in the middle part of the country here that we got a lot of convective action happening here. So it looks like there’s probably some thunderstorms going on. So if I’m, you know, intending to fly in one of these areas, that might be an indicator that it might not be safe for me to fly my drone. The other thing you can look at here are these different weather reporting stations, these are airports throughout the country. If I zoom in a few more will pop up the airports throughout the country that have what’s called a terminal aerodrome forecast or a TAF and those are weather reports that essentially give an 18 to 24 hour forecast of what’s going to happen with the weather. So you can hover over each one of these and it will give you the TAF it doesn’t decipher it for you. It gives you the raw data. So you have to know how to read those texts. But we’re not going to go over that in today’s video. So one thing you can see here is you can see the TFR that’s over washington dc I can zoom in on that I’m just using the scroll wheel on my computer on my mouse and it brings up the flight TFR for Washington DC. And as I hover over it, it gives me a little bit of information. It tells me the TFR number. The reason for it when it’s effective, the height of the altitude surface to 18,000 feet is valid until further notice. So that TFR does not expire. If I come down here, it looks to me like there’s something happening on the Space Coast. So I’m going to zoom in here just a little bit. And it tells me that there is a TFR for security reasons on 527 from 1630 zu to 527 at 2130 Zulu, so again, you need to convert that Zulu time to the local time for the area to determine when that TFR is effective, and it is effective from the surface to 17,999 feet. We’ve got one here for a T bar for the space launch. So that’s effective. Looks like about the same times, and then you know, we’ve got the VIP TFR as well. So if you just hover over it, it’ll give you a little bit of information about what’s going on. So if anybody’s thinking about flying a drone in there in the next couple of days, it’s probably not going to happen. So I can come over here, there is another TFR that doesn’t expire a permanent TFR over Disney World. So I can see it’s Disney World right here, and I have a TFR, the TFR number. For security reasons it’s from the surface to 3000 feet a GL until further notice. So you as a remote pilot are operating at 400 feet a GL and below. So as a result, you won’t be flying your drone over Disney World. So I’m gonna zoom out here, and I’m going to take you up to Northeast Wisconsin, which is actually where I learned how to fly airplanes. And we are going to look at a little bit more in depth at an individual sectional. So all I’m doing is I’m zooming in here a little bit I’ve got green bay airport, here at Appleton Oshkosh airport in Holstein etc. You can see right here I’m still on the world VFR so it’s got all the VFR sectionals just put together into one map right. What I’m going to do now is I’m going to switch over to the Green Bay sectional. So I’m going to click on Green Bay. And what it did was it gave me a scan or digital image of the actual printed
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sectional. So if I zoom out here a little bit, this is what it would look like if you received a printed copy of the Green Bay sectional. And so there is a lot of really great information for you as a remote pilot, in the margins of all of these different sections. Doesn’t matter which one you’re looking at. There’s a fantastic information for you. In those margins. You need to know how to read that information. So if you go into skyvector go skyvector comm find your area and just click on whatever city is up here. It’ll bring up that sectional for you. So I’m gonna zoom in here just a little bit, we’re going to go over these at a very high level, and I go over the individual classes of airspace in a separate video. So we’re just going to do this at a very high level here. So I’m looking at the Green Bay chart. This is the legend for the Green Bay chart. It gives me some information about the airports and the different symbols that are used for the airports. So if I look over here at the RV airport, and I’m looking at one of those ticks for, I can come over here and I go, oh, okay, well, here’s an airport, this symbol looks very similar. The ticks indicate that there is fuel available on the airport. So you want to be able to look at any one of these symbols that you see here on the chart. And you should be able to come over here to the legend or to the margins of the aircraft, the sectional and figure out what any one of those symbols mean. Right here, this is airport data. So all the different airports have Some information, some have more, some have less, but generally it’s going to follow the same format. So Oh our regional o RB. So this is going to be your or our regionals. The name of the airport or RB is location identifier, okay. So you can just follow that format to determine any information that you need about an airport right there.
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So then, if I, let’s come over here,
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we’ve got different color codings for the elevation. So in this chart, it goes from sea level to 2301. You’ll see different colors based on the height of the elevation so that gets into more oranges and browns as you get into different different elevations. But on this chart, we only go up to 2300 feet. So it just gives you that information. You can get all of the different colors for all the different elevations in the FAA aeronautical chart User’s Guide.
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And then if I come over here,
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and I scroll down just a little bit, I can look at Air traffic report traffic service and airspace information it gives me It tells me that a blue solid line indicates Class B airspace. magenta line indicates Class C airspace tells me about the mode c veil that are around Class E airspace for for manned aircraft and it tells me that the specific FA are I can go look at a federal aviation regulation I can go look at Class D airspace as indicated by a blue dotted line. The ceiling of my class D airspace is indicated in this square right here. So it’s going to be the airspace in hundreds of feet. So it’s going to tell me that the ceiling of the class Delta airspace is at 4000 feet MSL Class E airspace that extends down to the surface is going to be the magenta dotted line, the class g airspace with these transition areas are going to be indicated by sort of this magenta shaded color and then Same with the Class E airspace with for 20 1200 feet or greater above the surface is that the sort of blue shaded line. So you can look through here look at all the different symbols, what I suggest doing is going and looking at the sectional finding a symbol and you don’t know what it means any come over here and look for it. So right here, I see this like triangle looking thing with a.in the middle of it. So if I come over here, and I look for and I try to find that same symbol, I find, oh, here’s a triangle looking thing with a.in it and what that means is it’s
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it’s above,
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it’s an it’s some sort of obstruction above 200 feet, and below 1000 feet a GL or it could be above 299 feet a GL in an urban area. Now you want to make sure that you don’t confuse that with this right here where it’s a little triangle with a dot but it’s got the, you know, sort of lightning bolts coming off the top of it, which is indicating that it’s an obstruction With high intensity lights that may only operate part time. So there, there’s lights on there that but there might not be running all the time. The Space Launch activity, you know, I don’t know that we see that too much in Green Bay, but you could see it in some of the other sectionals. Some other miscellaneous information. parachute jumping, we’ve seen, we’ve talked about that parachute jumping is indicated by that parachute right there. So you want to go through and look at all the different symbols on the legend. Then if I scroll down here a little bit more. This is sort of the cover was so if I had this as a printed sectional and it was folded up nicely, this would be the cover to my sectional and it would tell me that I’m looking at the Green Bay sectional and it is effective, the 21st of may 2022, the third of December 2020. And so it’s going to include it gives you the dates of any sort of amendments to airspace. So you always want to make sure you’re looking at the most current sectional So if this is your past December 3 2020, this is not the most current sectional for you to be using. So and then what it does is it shows me all the different VFR sectionals throughout the United States. And it’s got green bay highlighted in there. So I can see that this is the Green Bay, this is the area that I’m looking for. So if you’re not 100%, certain what sectional your city might be on, you can you can kind of use this to figure out like, maybe you’re in, you may be in a sort of a remote part of Mississippi, you know, you could use this to determine whether or not you’re in the Memphis VFR sectional, you might be in the Houston or you could be on the New Orleans, VFR sectional.
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I’m going to scroll down a little bit more here.
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And what I want to show you is
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the different tower frequencies you’re not going to communicate with tower as a remote pilot, but you can certainly monitor the tower frequencies. And so if you have a VHF receiver You can that gets into these certain frequencies, you can monitor the towers of the different control towers throughout the throughout the state. So if you’re, you see you’re operating near Thunder Bay, you know, you want to you want to monitor the tower, you can you dial into 1.1 and you can monitor the tower itas is going to give you some good weather information, you can you can check that as well too, but and then we’ve got approach control frequencies. So greenbay approach control, we’ve got the different frequencies there. And then we’ve got some special use airspace on the Green Bay sectional chart. And so what it does is it gives each of the prohibited and restricted airspace they all have a number that is affiliated with them, okay, so if I’m looking at the prohibited space number 204, it’s the altitude is two but not including 4000 feet, so it’s going to be from the surface to 3999 Feed, it’s continuous it’s all day every day. And then there’s there’s not necessarily a controlling agency. So there’s there’s no frequency there. So it’s a prohibited area. So if you come up here,
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closer up to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota,
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this is where you’re going to see some prohibited areas. Okay? So we’ve got p 204 right here. So that tells me that you know, I can’t fly in this area below 4000 feet, and that’s to protect the wildlife in that area. Okay.
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So if I come back down here,
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I’ve got some restricted areas, it’s going to tell me that altitude to 23,000 feet, and the restricted area is from 800 to 1600. So eight for Tuesdays to Saturdays. And the controlling agency is Minneapolis center, and it’s going to be on those frequencies. And then we’ve got mas which are military operating areas. Those are indicated in the magenta color here. And so each row has a name. So if I come over here, there’s the Volk falls mo off right here, and it’s indicated by these hash symbols right here. And each more has a name. So you’re going to want to look for the name of the MOA. And I’m going to come over here and look for Volk falls MOA. So here’s the Volk falls ma right here it goes up to so the altitude indicates the floor of the MOA. So the floor of the mall is 500 A GL. So you as a remote pilot operating up to 400 a GL, you would not be operating in that law. So it’s going to be intermittent by note on for hours in advance, so you’d want to check norm or notices to Airmen. And it will tell you if the vo calls law is in use, and it’s controlling agencies Minneapolis center, those are the frequencies you can monitor those you don’t communicate on those frequencies as a remote pilot, but you can certainly monitor them. There’s just other general information in the charts, margins. So we’ve got the different the different scale so we’ve got it in kilometers, statute miles and nautical miles. So it can tell you you know, how you adjust the scale of the of the chart. You some notes from the FAA, there some information about military training routes. So the military training routes may extend from the surface upwards. So as a remote pilot you want to be cognizant of if you are operating on a military training route that there could be some low, low flying high speed aircraft in that area. And the subject says the the routes are subject to change every 56 days, you are cautioned and advised to contact flight service for route dimensions and current status for those routes affecting your flight. So you always want to make sure you’re checking all of the available information that you have to make a decision about your flight. Right here some information about the elevation The maximum elevation in a particular section of the chart, so 12 this would be 12,500 feet. So if we come up here and we look at the charts in each little section here, we’ve got 1900. So in this section of the sectional, then the maximum elevation would be 1900 feet so that means that there’s something that that goes up to 1900 It’s the highest known feature in that particular area. And then we’ve got some more information about checkpoints. So these are things that pilots so right here we’ve got like two more pilots manned aircraft pilots can when they’re calling into use a Oshkosh tower right here. They can say I’m overlake Buda more and the air traffic controller will know what like do more is same with brilliant right here. The air traffic controller will know if I say I’m over brilliant. They will know where brilliant is And so there’s more information here that you can certainly read through. Here’s some information of our reporting chart errors, it does happen. So you can report those errors right there. So this is how you can use skyvector as remote pilot. There’s a lot of information on these VFR charts, a ton of information, but you want to just get in there, look at them. Just see what you can find. If you have questions, you can certainly post them in my facebook group. And you know, the goal here is to get you feeling comfortable using these charts. There’s a lot of information on them. I don’t want it to be overwhelming. But this is a great way for you as a remote pilot to start to understand the Airspace System.
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Are you a teacher, a pilot or a STEM education advocate? Are you interested in collaborating with others to help bring drones to your local school, whether it’s in the classroom Or as an after school club. Join my free educators who drone online community to share ideas, collaborate and get help started with drones and STEM education. Head over to www dot educators who drone calm now to join us today.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
