How do you find the limits of areas on a chart?

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Judah writes:

In the real world, you start out at a known location, and monitor your
progress using navigation tools such as pilotage, dead reckoning, etc.
You don't simply 'pop' into a largely empty area of a chart.

I don't see any difference between the two.

There go those blinders again!

The charts have numerous landmarks - lakes, rivers, roads, power lines,
cities, racetracks, aqueducts, quarries, bridges, antennas, hills,
mountains.

Not enough to locate the boundaries of the airspaces.

If you know how to read a sectional properly and can see out the window 5
miles in each direction or more (10 miles total) you should be fine.

All are very discernable from the air in real life. MSFS does not
effectively simulate the real-world view of the ground from the cockpit
of a small plane, and that is why you are having so much trouble.

No, I'm having trouble because there isn't anything on the chart that
allows me to locate airspace boundaries in many cases. The boundaries
are not stenciled on the ground outside the window, even in real life.

No, you are having trouble because you don't know how to read a sectional.
That became obvious in your question about the Turtle MOA.

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Wolfgang Schwanke writes:

You ought to know where you are anyway, at least roughly. If you do,
you also know when approaching an airspace indicated in the chart.

But you don't know when you've cross the boundary in most cases. You
can only guess. You can find points that are definitely outside or
definitely inside, but you cannot find the boundary itself.

You can use multiple points to determine your location with a fair amount
of precision, and you can estimate with a fair amount of accuracy your
distance from the landmarks.

Sometimes the airspaces to avoid are so close together that one cannot
avoid them and still complete the flight.

Where is this?

No, but they don't have to for that purpose. You deduce your position
in the topography relative to visible landmarks without having to be
exactly over them, and from there you deduce your position relative to
whatever airspace depicted on the map, once again without its boundary
having to be exactly on a landmark.

That only works if you leave an extremely wide margin for error.

How wide, exactly? Clearly, you're not going to trace a line with your
airplane track along an airspace boundary using pilotage and dead reckoning
in most cases. But it's not very difficult to triangulate your position
using the landmarks you can observe, even in a 5-10nm radius.

Mxsmanic wrote:
I see tons of restricted areas, MOAs, Class B, C, D, E airspace, and
the like on charts, but no clear indication of how to locate the
boundaries of these areas other than by pure guesstimate based on
looking at the chart.

The expired chart offer still stands... G

There are shaded lines denoting E/G space. Most of a chart can be E, so
the E/G line can be difficult to find.

B, C, and D are easy, they have solid and dotted lines, as well as
numbers denoting lateral and vertical limits.

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Sometimes the airspaces to avoid are so close together that one cannot
avoid them and still complete the flight.

In that case, you resort to common sense. Either you pick an alternative
route (or altitude) that doesn't have that problem, or you establish radio
contact with the appropriate ATC facility so you can transit the airspace
without having to worry about the exact boundary.

However, airspaces in such close proximity almost always occur in congested
areas where a plethora of landmarks let you identify the boundaries with
precision. Do you have a contrary example in mind?

--Gary

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...


But the charts don't have that many landmarks, and the boundaries
rarely seem to be based on landmarks; instead, they seem to have been
surveyed.


The chart has a metric butt load of landmarks. Hell, I'd go so far to say
that it is mostly landmarks.

In article ,
Mxsmanic wrote:

Dan writes:

I think if you're going to thread tight areas in an unfamiliar metro
area these days, you'd better have a GPS with airspace depiction.
Sure, you may be able to do it via pilotage, but then again you could
easily screw up and bust class B (or worse).

I think a GPS is useful in any case--but how do pilots without moving
maps and GPS do it?

What I have found works well is to just wing it. If I guess wrong, an F-16
pulls up beside me and gives me directions. It's really a very convenient
system.

On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 10:16:34 -0500, Roy Smith wrote:

In article ,
Mxsmanic wrote:

Dan writes:

I think if you're going to thread tight areas in an unfamiliar metro
area these days, you'd better have a GPS with airspace depiction.
Sure, you may be able to do it via pilotage, but then again you could
easily screw up and bust class B (or worse).

I think a GPS is useful in any case--but how do pilots without moving
maps and GPS do it?

What I have found works well is to just wing it. If I guess wrong, an F-16
pulls up beside me and gives me directions. It's really a very convenient
system.

The other factor is "plausible deniability." :-)

The best advice I ever heard was that if ATC accuses you of violating their
airspace, your response should be, "My navigation shows me outside your
controlled area. But which way would you like me to steer?"

A few years back, I was a right-seater on a Helio Courier flown by a Boeing test
pilot during work just outside a local Class C area controlled by the Navy. He
contacted the controller who accused him of entering without permission. The
pilot then fed the controller the riot act. The bounds were definite, and we
were definitely outside them. Later, he told me that the Navy used that
particular station for new controllers....

Ron Wanttaja

On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:35:04 GMT, B A R R Y
wrote:

Mxsmanic wrote:
I see tons of restricted areas, MOAs, Class B, C, D, E airspace, and
the like on charts, but no clear indication of how to locate the
boundaries of these areas other than by pure guesstimate based on
looking at the chart.

The expired chart offer still stands... G

There are shaded lines denoting E/G space. Most of a chart can be E, so
the E/G line can be difficult to find.

B, C, and D are easy, they have solid and dotted lines, as well as
numbers denoting lateral and vertical limits.

I don't know about the rest of the country, but around the SF Bay
area, most permanent airspace boundaries are chosen to coincide with
surface features or VOR radials. (It may be trickier further east,
where all the silos look alike.)

For more help in terminal areas, the back side of the terminal charts
have little drawings of what key landmarks actually look like.

And for temporary areas, the gummint kindly charts them and posts them
anew, superimposed on your choice of sectional, WAC, or GNC, every
morning on http://airspace.nifc.gov/mapping/nifc/index.cfm

Don

"Dan" wrote in message
oups.com...
I think if you're going to thread tight areas in an unfamiliar metro
area these days, you'd better have a GPS with airspace depiction.
Sure, you may be able to do it via pilotage, but then again you could
easily screw up and bust class B (or worse).

Depends upon how convoluted the airspace might be... Houston is not overly
convoluted and I don't have a problem threading the various airspaces with
just a LORAN, but for the most part, our airspace relies on 8nm inner cones
around the two Class-B airports that we have... The one for HOU is flattened
a bit on top to allow for the I-10 VFR corridor between HOU and IAH, even if
you ignore that part of it and just figure that each airport has an 8nm
inner cone around it, you can squeeze through there with just a minimal
LORAN or GPS that only gives you bearing and distance... Houston probably
wouldn't be that bad if you were even unfamiliar with it, but there are
definitely some areas where having a moving map with the airspace delimited
on it might be rather useful...

"Dan" wrote in
oups.com:

I think if you're going to thread tight areas in an unfamiliar metro
area these days, you'd better have a GPS with airspace depiction.
Sure, you may be able to do it via pilotage, but then again you could
easily screw up and bust class B (or worse).

I think it depends on a whole lot of factors.

The Hudson River VFR Corridor in NYC is a tight area, but it easy to identify
the lateral and vertical limits using landmarks the whole way down, even for
pilots who are not from the area. In fact, when I fly the Hudson River, I
don't have time to be looking at the GPS much if at all...

But it also depends on how you define unfamiliar. There is a WHOLE LOT of
information available about flying the Hudson River corridor that a pilot can
use to become familiar with it even before ever having been there in person.