Airspace Explained With Minecraft!

if you're trying to understand the airspace things can get overwhelming really quick so today we're gonna help you understand airspace using minecraft's a new perspective on how to look at things coming up so I said understanding your space can be overwhelming mostly because it's given to us like this in a sectional it looks complicated with lines number circles and different colors all over the place it's almost like my five-year-old do some abstract art then the FAA gives us this diagram to understand it now everything on the sectional has a meaning but we're not going in-depth on those in this video details of the sectional are covered in the legend but we're only focusing on this portion of it here to tell us what we need to know to find the airspace that it depicts so our main focus here is gonna be on understanding airspace for visual flight rules or VFR understanding it is hard for one big reason we're looking at it in a complicated two-dimensional image and trying to make sense of it in a three-dimensional world diggin-in let's look at Deer Valley Airport my home field on the sectional is depicted by this blue dashed circle which according to the legend tells us that it's in Class D airspace then using the square here we understand that the airspace extends from the ground and up to but not including 4000 feet then in our heads we have to translate this 2d information into 3d so it makes some sense so really the airspace is like a wide cylinder with defined circular boundaries and a ceiling and you know what I'm a visual learner let's make this easier on ourselves and build it in Minecraft here minecraft we really get a feel for what it's supposed to be like you can actually see that the airspace is shaped like a wide cylinder with a defined circular boundary and a ceiling with the airport at the center with that in mind Class D airspace is generally from the surface up to 2500 feet above the airport elevation it typically extends to 5 miles horizontally and surrounds towered airports its actual radius and shape can vary though depending on the needs of the airport and what surrounds it which is why sometimes you get Class D airspace that looks like this where these three airports are trying to eat each other flying into Class D airspace all you need is a two-way radio to enter you need to establish two-way communications with the control tower which means they have to respond to you using your callsign before you enter their airspace so I feel like minecraft made that super easy to understand now one thing I didn't talk about was VFR weather minimums and cloud clearances for Class D airspace for now I want to help you understand how this airspace is structured and then we'll cover VFR weather and clearances all at once anyways let's move on to Class C airspace looking back at the sectional we're going all the way over to Springfield Branson Airport in Missouri to see some standard Class C airspace Class C airspace is depicted by these magenta lines and you'll notice that there's two of them looking closer you'll see that this airspace not only has a defined ceiling but also a floor and they're different for each ring this is because it's tiered and has shelves kind of like a small upside-down wedding cake over the airport let's head back into Minecraft to see how this looks I guess you could say it resembles a disproportionate upside-down wedding cake but a wedding cake nonetheless now Class C airspace is more defined having general vertical and horizontal parameters the first ring is from the ground up to 4,000 feet above the airport elevation and extends five miles from the airport the second ring starts at 1,200 feet above airport elevation and goes to 4,000 feet extending 10 miles from the airport which makes that shelf we were talking about in our example I removed the 4,000 foot wall from the inner ring so you can see what the inside of the airspace would look like especially since it all extends to the same altitude now Class C airspace shelves and shapes can change depending on the needs of the airport which can give you airspace that is shaped like this man this is overly complicated and just about breaks every rule we went over anyways to fly into Class E airspace you need to have a two-way radio and a transponder with altitude reporting capabilities typically called a mode C transponder more recently you also have to have a DSP out just like Class D airspace you have to establish communication with a control tower before entering again meaning they have to respond to you using your callsign first hopefully the visuals helping you understand things a little bit better especially since we're just trying to understand what the shape of these things look like in the real world so let's move on to the most complicated airspace of all Class B airspace and back to the sectional now I know this greater Phoenix airspace looks complicated and it's because there's a lot of stuff going on here but let's focus on just the Class B airspace depicted by these solid blue lines growing outward from the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport just like Class C airspace Class B has shelves but it's not limited to just two tiers there's as many as needed to support the airport its traffic and what surrounds it each shelf can have a different shape and size but they all work outward and upward away from the airport each shelf has a base and a ceiling with the top typically at 10,000 feet MSL alright it's time to see this in Minecraft so this took a long time to make and I actually commissioned my 13 year old son to get it done it's not perfectly scaled but it gives a great representation of the Class B airspace in Phoenix Arizona now you can really see how the shelves move up and out away from the airport and you can see how ridiculously huge it is this allows aircraft to fly underneath the shelves without having to contact Phoenix tower in fact the Phoenix Class B airspace has eight towered airports underneath it to operate independently as shown here in this more Phoenix like desert desk landscape guys literally I just threw sand everywhere going back to its shape from the inside of the Class B airspace it looks more like a funnel to the airport that's because it is the fingers and shapes are designed to provide safe passage for larger air traffic all the way to the airport which is why it's so big to fly in Class B airspace you need to have a two-way radio and a transponder with altitude reporting capability again typically called a mode C transponder you also have to have that ATS B that we were talking about earlier entering Class B airspace is different too and requires more than just establishing communications you have to have ATC clearance and be cleared into the Bravo prior to entry if you don't hear these words don't enter the airspace so far we've been building on each type of airspace Class D çb and next in line is Class A but it serves a completely different purpose let's look at it real quick back in minecraft it's all the way up there minecraft can only render so far but you can see it represented by the red ceiling which is actually its base it goes from 18,000 feet msl to 60,000 feet msl and you have to be instrument-rated to fly in it you also need ATC clearance to enter and that's all the detail we're going to go into it in this video because we're focused on VFR all right this is gonna feel like we're backtracking but let's take it in Class G and E airspace starting with Class G going back to the FAS depiction of what airspace looks like we see that Class G airspace starts at the ground and extends to one of three altitudes 700 feet AGL 1,200 feet AGL and 14,500 feet MSL outside that this picture doesn't really tell a good story so here's how it works Class G airspace covers the whole United States like a blanket hovering at 700 or 1,200 feet AGL which means when we look at the sectional Class G airspace is literally everywhere the only time it isn't is when it runs into another airspace that begins at the surface like Class E D C or B airspace think of them as holes in that blanket let's head over to Minecraft and make some sense of this so what I've done is flattened a large portion of the terrain to make things simple the blue layer here represents the ceiling of the Class G airspace at 1200 feet AGL you're gonna have to use your imagination a little here because this layer covers most everything literally flown with the terrain as it changes this makes it incredibly hard to recreate thus flattening a portion for illustration over here it steps down to this magenta level representing 700 foot AGL Class G airspace if you're flying under one of these 2 layers you're flying in Class G airspace and if you find an airport under one of these 2 layers it's a Class G Airport but when you fly into a Class E DC or B Airport it'll look more like this with the airspace eliminating the Class G making that hole in the blanket that we were talking about oddly enough the 1200 foot AGL Class G airspace isn't really depicted on the sectional it's just there and you're expected to know that what you do see on the sectional is when it drops a 700 feet AGL looking for the sectional you can see this large oval shape made by this symbol it indicates the Class G airspace inside that oval drops down to 700 feet AGL leaving the Class G outside it 1,200 feet AGL we'll go into more detail on why in just a minute the last portion of Class G airspace goes up to 14,500 feet MSL and you'll actually be hard-pressed to find much of it in the United States but more on that in a minute too to fly into Class G airspace there's no required equipment and you don't need to talk to anyone to because it's considered uncontrolled airspace all right on to the last airspace we're talking about in this video Class E airspace so classy airspace is just about everything else if you wanted to see what classy airspace looks like in Minecraft it would look like this the vast majority of Class E airspace isn't depicted on the sectional either its boundaries are defined by other air spaces what's important about it is is that it's considered controlled airspace if you're flying IFR because of this class II molds a lot of the Class G airspace below it going back to the sectional you'll see airports surrounded with Class G airspace that have a 700-foot ceiling this is because the Class E airspace is pushing down on that Class G as it gets closer to the airport to support that I of our traffic so they can be controlled to and from their destination now when Class E airspace is depicted on the sectional is to indicate that it extends all the way to the surface again to support that by fr traffic and it's usually at non-towered fields working together the G and E airspace can create some goofy shape to accommodate IFR approaches and departures back in Minecraft I made one to show you how it looks to fly in Class E airspace there's no required equipment unless you're flying above 10,000 feet MSL then you'll need a mode C transponder with an ESB you don't need to talk to anyone if you're flying VFR but it's always a good practice to the controlling frequencies for safety purposes all right let's circle back to that Class G airspace and its 14,500 foot ceiling the reason you can't find much of it is because it's being replaced by classy airspace again because it's controlled airspace for IFR traffic you see aircraft used to navigate by vor Zoar Airways so the controlled airspace was limited to those routes leaving Class G everywhere else up to 14,500 feet MSL but since the introduction of GPS aircraft can fly by direct routing going from point to point they still need to be controlled so that Class G had to be replaced with Class E to accommodate direct routing so back when we started with the first airspace we mentioned VFR weather minimums and cloud clearances and now it's time to talk about them each airspace has its own set and some of them change based off of altitude and time of day honestly this is something you're just gonna have to memorize but we do have a fancy aid that should help you get them committed to memory so first let's define a few things weather minimums refer to a minimum visibility in statute miles and minimum clearances refer to how far away you have to stay above below and horizontally from the clouds let's use Class D airspace in a quick example for visibility we need three statute miles and for our cloud clearances we need to say a thousand feet above 500 feet below and two thousand feet horizontally away now let's write this in shorthand which will help with memorization so three one five two well there's something fun we have a 152 and that's a Cessna and looking back at the cloud clearances this is the most used clearance let's keep that in mind and use a style of shorthand from here on out so let's start with drawing an e and g with the e fitting in the upper part of the G so we can break things up into sections now let's go in order of airspace up top we have Class A where the minimums don't apply to us in Class B we need three Statue miles visibility and to be clear of clouds clear of clouds meaning you can fly up to but not into the cloud in Class C we need three statute miles visibility and need to state 1000 feet above five feet below and 2,000 feet horizontal of the clouds Class D is the same as Class C both having our little 152 and just in case you are wondering there's no class F in the United States alright that's it for the easy stuff which is why the main focus here is Class E and G airspace let's define these dashed lines real quick the ones on the left are for daytime and the ones on the right are for night now that almost rhymes anyways the first horizontal line is for altitudes above 10,000 feet MSL and the bottom one is for altitudes above 1,200 feet AGL going across the top all the numbers are the same five satchi miles visibility 1,000 feet above 1,000 feet below and one statute mile horizontally of the clouds the minimums are higher here because aircraft above 10,000 feet can travel faster so additional time is needed to see and avoid and just in case you missed it that last one in the top row means one statute mile but only in the top row rounding out our Class E airspace we're going back to that three 150 to below 10,000 feet the fastest you can go is 250 knots so not much space is needed to see and avoid this is true over on the Class G side to where during the day it drops all the way down to one statute mile for visibility nighttime kicks back up to three statute miles but nighttime usually has more visibility requirements now after defining those realize that these four areas are for that 14,500 foot Class G airspace that Class E is quickly replacing but you should still know what they are finishing things off the Class G that we normally fly in during the day this ability needs to be one statute mile and clear of clouds at night a bit more is required taking us back to the three 152 for the last time now hopefully this little memory aid will help you memorize visibility and cloud clearance requirements for VFR flight and I'm not just gonna leave you hanging here in the description you'll find a link to this graphic that I made alright that was a lot what we didn't cover in here with special use airspace in airspace areas will have to cover those in another video but this is everything that we think you need to know to cover the basics of airspace hey guys thanks for watching the video I forgot to record an outro the other day when I was doing this so it's just really late at night so if you liked the video go ahead and give it a thumbs up and tell us what you think down in the comments below especially if you think we missed something also share aviation wherever you can and we'll see in the next one

Channel: Fly With The Guys

Views: 31,128

Rating: 4.9715381 out of 5

Keywords: Airspace, private pilot license, airspace rules, private pilot, flight training, airspace explained, airspace memory aid, weather minimums, understanding airspace, class g airspace, class e airspace, class b airspace, class c airspace, vfr weather minimums, class d airspace, aviation, airplane, airspace classes, sectional, national airspace system, pilot training, avgeek, airspace class, airspace classes explained, class a airspace, vfr cloud clearances, how airspace works

Id: T83c6MYztd4

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 14 2020