Ep. 82: Advanced Sectional Chart Knowledge | VFR Map

hey guys john from fly mike alpha calm and today i'm here to go into a little bit more detail with you on VFR sectional charts we're gonna go into some of the more nitty gritty details that are really helpful to know as you're flying around VFR using these charts as well as preparing for any sort of knowledge test or getting ready for your private pilot's check ride or things like that or even training to the CFI level it's great to know all the details and what all these symbols on the chart actually mean so we're going to start off with just some of the simple things like VFR checkpoints what are these little flags here well those little flags symbolize VFR checkpoints and a VFR checkpoint is just that it's a checkpoint that someone flying visually would use to identify where they are when they're in the air so if someone flies from Venice to Punta Gorda to LaBelle they would probably be using the Punta Gorda Airport Tucker's corner and labelled all as VFR checkpoints maybe even Coral Creek Airport off their right side so know that near these flags there's going to be a concentrated amount of VFR traffic all flying over that point to identify it as a VFR checkpoint along their route of flight so you can expect more of you if our traffic there as well as using that as a helpful way to navigate yourself other little things that we'll talk about here are going to be how to contact flight service or what these frequencies mean around the vor so that's not particularly how we're going to contact flight service but how would we go about it and how do we interpret these numbers well one to 2.0 to five here simply means that that is the number we could contact flight service on and transmit and receive them and over the Punta Gorda vor so that antenna there is probably tied together with the Punta Gorda vor if we come up here to the Sarasota bortac we see one to two point one and in that case we would have to transmit to flight service on one to two point one and we would receive them over the Sarasota vor 117 point oh so they're receiving us on one to two point one we're receiving them on 117 point oh so we will go into another video where we actually explain to you how to call flight service but the other thing that you need to know here is what flight service are you actually calling first so we're gonna be calling st. Petersburg radio or st. Petersburg flight service when we're in this area in near Sarasota around Punta Gorda still st. Petersburg as we had a little further south we start to see Miami pop up here so for the Lee County vortac we would be talking to Miami flight service and it doesn't appear that there's actually any frequencies that they could actually receive us on there however there is an our CEO at Fort Myers Airport that we could contact Miami flight service on and we see that they can transmit and receive on one to two point to one to two point six five and they can receive us on twenty-two point one and we would have to receive them over one of these other frequencies here so Fort Myers has an our CEO at the airport for Miami flight service Miami Radio down here at Naples they don't have anything list over the vor but they do have an our CEO so the Naples our CEO to contact Miami radio is one two three point six and they can transmit and receive on that frequency now notice here we have this little H in the upper right hand corner of the Lee County vortac and what that little H is it means that there's high wass available over that vor frequency and that's probably why they're not going to be transmitting flight service stuff over that vor because they want to keep it free and clear so you can listen to the hi wasp broadcast which is hazardous in flight weather advisory service and that's simply going to be any sort of bad weather is going to be broadcast continuously over that frequency by an automated voice along with the Morse code identifier for that station now while we're down here we can see some of these blue lines running along near these vor s this particular blue line which is q102 is a GPS route or GPS airway these other blue lines with VV 35 and v 521 well that's Victor Airways Victor 521 and Victor 35 and these Victor Airways are somewhat protected airspace for VFR aircraft to fly along high afar aircraft use them as well to navigate vor stations so you could be assigned something say along the route of flight or you could let flight service know that your route of flight is from Southwest Florida international the victor 599 to thunder and then direct Palm Beach go glades Airport so so this is a way for you to actually show or announce what your route of flight is going to be you could say I'm going to fly from Southwest Florida national via victor 521 to Winco intersection and then direct Big Cypress so for search-and-rescue purposes you could put that in your flight plan so they knew what routes you were flying from the different airports anyway be navigating along those victor Airways just because those are obviously good places where you can receive the signal probably pretty well and it's also echo airspace so it's protected from people flying in bad weather it's on Gulf airspace so there's slightly higher visibility requirements along there and also note that this is for nautical miles wide on either side of the airway so the total airway is 8 miles wide 8 nautical miles wide 4 nautical miles either side of the centerline of the airway now in terms of other routes we see depict on the chart we'll also see some VR and IR routes and these are Mt ours when they're gray like this those are mtrs for visual military training routes or instruments military training routes now we see here we have one thousand six four digits that means that route is flowing below 1,500 feet AGL so you're gonna have some big heavy fast-moving military traffic below 1,500 feet there here we have some military traffic operating above 1500 feet under instrument flight rules rather than visual flight rules so those gray lines are mtrs these vor intersections we talked about briefly those are just where to Victor Airways or two lines from a vor to radials intersect and they happen put a name to it someone helps you identify where you're going in terms of air traffic control also you could say you want to fly from Southwest Florida national via Victor $5.99 to Thunder and then via Victor 157 down to looks like whatever that vor is there the dolphin vor so that could be a route of flight for you and you would use that intersection as a changeover point to switch frequencies to start dialing in the other radial and flying towards the other vor now as we're talking about do ours sometimes you'll notice that they're kind of cockeyed it looks anyways towards these lines that run true north these lines are longitudinal lines that run true north our vor s are offset slightly the zero degrees is kind of bumped over a little bit and the reason for that is that these vo ours are accounting for magnetic variation in the area and we can see here that we have isogonic lines that tell us about magnetic variation here at six degrees west over here it's five degrees west so what that basically means is that flying the 360 or radial off the vor would probably be the same as flying a three six zero compass heading if there was no wind but it's not the same as flying true north so true north is about six degrees off of magnetic north in this particular area of Florida over here it's about five degrees off and that's just due to the Earth's magnetic pole being not located perfectly at true north so now that we're talking about flying along these true north lines let's talk about what they really mean to us these latitude and longitude lines well for test purposes they often ask you to identify where an airport lies latitude Lee and longitudinally using these lines so let's use the Venice Airport as an example to start here well first thing I'm gonna do find my lines that run to north and south and east west here and I'm going to find some big numbers with these little circles next to them degrees 81 degrees 27 degrees so now that I've found those two numbers now I can work my way over and see that okay this line here 27 degrees 27 degrees that is latitude so 27 degrees north running laterally across the earth and then I can also find a big two eight up here so as i zoom out here and I look I've got two eight I've got two seven and I've got one line in between them so that must be twenty seven point five that makes sense that's how this map is set up scale wise 27 degrees north twenty seven point five north 28 degrees north cool so now let's move over towards Venice and instead of expressing this as twenty seven point five I'm gonna call it in terms of degrees minutes seconds so 27 degrees and 30 minutes instead of twenty seven point five along here so if that's 27 minutes 27 degrees in 30 minutes and it looks like there's about twenty nine lines here making this line here the thirtieth thirty minute that means each one of these lines is one minute in terms of measuring and DMS so I have 27 degrees one two three four about four and a half minutes is the coordinate for Venice so 27 degrees north four-and-a-half minutes now we can express that instead of four and a half minutes as four minutes in 30 seconds so 27 30 minute 27 four minutes 30 seconds is the north coordinate for Venice now how about our westerly coordinate we're in the Western Hemisphere so we know that 82 pertains to an 81 pertains to our hour longitude and so now we've got our 81 here that's going to be our longitudinal line our long line north-south and we can zoom out a little bit we've got 81 82 and we can see there's one line that divides them if we zoom way out we can see these squares a little bit better here but we've got 82 right there and then we've got a dividing line and then 81 so again this is set up as 81 81 point 5 and 82 now once again now one point five here it's going to be 81 degrees thirty minutes so 81 degrees west 30 minutes and so now we're going to come over here for Venice we find 82 and over here would be 82 and a half so 82 minutes I'm sorry 82 degrees and 30 minutes now to figure out where Venice lies we could just count backwards so we have 82 degrees 82 degrees 30 minutes now I'm gonna say 82 degrees 29 minutes 28 27 and I'd say that's about 26 and a half so now I'm going to go ahead and Express Venice's position as 82 degrees 26 minutes and 30 seconds west 27 degrees 4 minutes 30 seconds north and you can express that hi everyone you can express the north coordinate or the west coordinate first to believe they go north first your latitude first and then your longitude so Venice lies at 27 degrees four and a half minutes north and about 82 degrees 26 and a half minutes west just for fun let's go ahead and figure out where the Punta Gorda Airport is here what lies just about right along 82 so I'm going to go up here and say that's 82 80 159 then we'll just call it 81 degrees 59 minutes west and then 27 I'm going towards the equator so it's going to be a little less so I can say 27 I'll be 2659 there 26 58 57 56 55 right about 55 so about 26 degrees 55 minutes north in about 81 degrees 59 minutes west and that is how we find our latitude and longitude for our airports now some other fun little symbols on this chart that may not immediately make sense to you we come down here to Miami well we know blue lines are typically water and so if blue lines typically water like this we see this blue grid here what that is is just a bunch of man-made canals around the nuclear power plant for cooling water and those are just out there canals so although it looks like some sort of fancy symbol for a grid or whatever well it's just a grid pattern of canals that's just water down there that's very easily identifiable from the air looking over here we have this little black dot followed by buildings that means there are some buildings on that rather deserted key there because there's unpopulated but we can see some buildings there that can help us identify our position these little asterisks here out in the water are symbols for rocks just isolated rocks here and there so probably a bad place to be sailing but not a bad place to be flying so it's probably really beautiful and you could use these rocks to help in point your location in using those buildings and rocks and key and such like that this little blue dot down here is a marine light of some sort so probably a lot more visible at night than in the day time but something down there some sort of buoy or something like that and there's a marine light probably that marine light is there to keep ships from crossing it to going into the rocky area see how they stay to the east of that light they'll be clear of all those rocks other little symbols that are pertinent to us well this little parachute symbol here that means they're skydiving activities going on out of that Airport this symbol here means there's gliders and there's a couple other things you can check out on the chart legend they're for unmanned aerial vehicles and other symbols that they may have near the airport little star simple there is Speedway they can also use the star symbol as a designation for a stadium as they do in Tampa to show where Raymond James Stadium is and other little things that we'll notice along here is going to be these little black dots every so often and those little black dots denote something could be buildings could be a water tower oftentimes a little scene next to it but when you see little black dots like that and this one has a black dot in 62 feet that's just showing well about 62 feet msl and there's something there to denote where you are here that little black dots a little prison and that's a very slit and file ball from the air here we have pumping stations pumping station in a mill so are just good VFR checkpoints to use to help you identify where you actually are along your route of flight one other interesting symbol that you may not be familiar with this is if you look over here over to Lake Okeechobee they actually do let you know how high the lake is this number 16 over here is actually the height of the lake MSL so if you're landing on the lake saying a seaplane your altimeter should read 16 feet MSL and that becomes rather pertinent maybe not so much in Lake Okeechobee but certainly in other lakes and other states that are much higher elevations for larger lakes they should actually list what the elevation of the water is in that lake so here in Lake Okeechobee the water in that lake is 16 feet higher than the water and the Atlantic or in the Gulf Mexico so lastly let's go ahead and move a little south here and take a look at the southern part of Florida as we look here we see all these little islands and these little black dots here all over the place that just means mini islands sandbars basically flats that are often exposed at low tide and covered at high tide be an awesome place to have an engine failure if you have if they're hard at least to land on but at least you can land in some pretty shallow water and be near a key there to have someone come pick you up looking down around here we see these little symbols here and some letters VPL why why well these are a lot like our vor intersections so the intersections we have like Carter that come off of two victor airways and they have a five letter identifier for it well we have the same thing for GPS and obviously there's not GPS things or radials of intercept because GPS is just all over the place but this is just a fix that you can navigate to GPS fix and that could be something that you could use in a route of flight to help plan it or to let air-traffic-control know where you are but as the vp lyy intersection they're similar to the vp koe intersection here and that just denotes a gps intersection or Waypoint rather that you could program into your database and fly to that Waypoint very similar to an intersection like Carter or like Kubek here hey guys thanks so much for watching and thank you so much for sharing us on Facebook Twitter and all the other social media sites if you have any questions about the video at all just leave them in the comments below and we'll get back to you as soon as possible be sure to give us a thumbs up on our video and you can subscribe to us to keep up with all our latest episodes right over here on the right also check out some of these other helpful videos below and remember if you can't fly every day then fly a Mike alpha comm we'll see you all next time

Channel: FLY8MA.com Flight Training

Views: 107,673

Keywords: Flight Training, flighttraining, fly8ma.com, fly8ma, 8ma, online ground school, private pilot ground school, fly 8ma, fly 8ma.com, pilot, aircraft, aviation, landing, cessna, airport, how to, flight vlog, airplane, flying, plane, checkride, fly, ATC Audio, jon, john, kotwicki, sectional chart, vfr sectional chart, Advanced Sectional Knowledge, mzeroa, mraviation101, shareaviation, vfr map, map, how to read vfr sectional, friendly skies film, m0a, steveo1kinevo, und, erau, aerospace, 82

Id: f9Yoi6SDlAs

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2016