Uncontrolled Airport Information - Sectional Chart

[Music] hi everyone this is will with KL aviation and in this lesson we're going to look at airport symbols on a VFR sectional chart for non-towered airports all right here we have three non-towered airports if talladega in the middle Anniston regional off to the east and st. Clair County off to the west now the first thing we can see is that all of these are magenta symbols now the magenta is going to indicate to us that there is no control tower at the field if there is a control tower it's going to be blue we'll go over towered airports in a separate lesson the next thing to notice is that there looks like a little bit of a runway diagram in each circle this actually is a diagram of what the runways look like at the airport in all of these cases there's only one runway but if there were two runways or three or as many as there are they will all be depicted now because these are solid magenta circles with the runways depicted we can tell that the runways are between 1500 feet long and eight thousand 69 feet long if the symbols actually looked like a runway which will cover it in Tower airports with no circle around them that would indicate that the runway or the longest runway was longer than eight thousand and sixty nine feet most smaller general aviation airports though don't have runways that long and they're going to look just like these three airports right here okay so the next thing that we can see about these circles is that we have these little tick marks around the outside what these tick marks indicate is that the airport has fuel services available and it also will have somebody there during normal business hours ten a.m. to 4:00 p.m. local time Monday through Friday attending the airport providing some services available to you such as fuel maintenance or any sort of other services that you might need next all of these airports have this little star on top replacing the top tick mark that star indicates the airport has a rotating beacon most airports in the country have a rotating beacon so most Airport diagrams are going to have this star on them finally just by looking at the symbol itself if we look at talladega there's this little dot right here now if we come down and look we can see that there's a Talladega vor and the circle is generally around the Talladega Airport so what this little dot is is the actual location on the field of where the vor is located so you know if you're tracking to the Talladega of you are you're basically tracking to the end of runway 3 or the beginning of runway 2 1 ok now that we know the basics about what we can get from just the airport symbol itself let's take a look at all of this text underneath each diagram ok first we have the airport named st. Clair County Talladega and Anniston Regional these are all the official names for the airport and the name that you should use if you're using the CTA for common traffic advisory frequency so that everybody in the area knows exactly what airport you're talking about certain cases there might be two airports in a city and if you just use the city name who knows which one you're talking about after the airport name we have the identifier for the airport on the sectional chart the identifier is just going to be the three letters for the airport it's not going to include the K for a United States Airport okay underneath the airport name identifier we're going to have the weather frequency so whether it's an a wasps or a sauce and the frequency that you can pick up the minute weather so if you're going into Talladega you have an a wasps tree system and you can get it on one one eight point four to five most of these a wasps and a sauce frequencies are shared amongst at many airports so you're gonna have to listen up closely and make sure that you have the right Airport when you're listening there might be an airport 50 60 70 miles away with the same frequency and if you're up just a little bit higher maybe seven to ten thousand feet you might be able to pick up both of them so it's very important to listen to make sure that you have the right a Wasser a sauce frequency alright we're gonna drop down one line and we have the airport elevation so here at Anniston six hundred and twelve feet Talladega five hundred twenty nine feet st. Clair 485 feet all of these are in MSL next most non-towered airports are going to have this little with a asterisks that technically indicates that it's a non continuous lighting you have to look at the airport facility directory but for practical purposes it means that there is pilot controlled alighting at the field okay next we have this two digit number so sixty at talladega fifty is st. Clair and 70 at Aniston it may be a three-digit number as well this is the runway length of the longest runway in thousands of feet so in this case st. Clair it's a five thousand foot long runway Talladega has a six thousand foot long runway and Anniston has a seven thousand foot long runway if the runway were to be 11 thousand feet long you would see a 1-1 0 so it could be a three-digit number in that case becomes a little bit confusing sometimes if you're looking at a three-digit number for elevation and a three-digit number for runway length especially in cases where the airport may be located at let's say a hundred feet well cover those a little bit more in depth also with towered airports since you'll run into that just a little bit more with the longer runways at most Tower at airports okay next we have the CTF our common traffic advisory frequency and note one thing real quick here you notice how the CTF frequency here at st. Clair is on a new line that is just because there's this obstruction of a tower at 742 feet that doesn't allow that seat a frequency to be placed on the same line as the others so there's not really convention as to how many lines there are for an airport diagram or the airport information so just keep reading down they may be several lines long okay this is a common tactic traffic advisory frequency so it's what you'll use to call traffic when you are in the vicinity of the airport again a lot of these frequencies one twenty two point eight is a very common one 123 six not so common but they'll be shared amongst many airports in the area so it's very important to use this official full airport name so that whoever you're talking to on the traffic advisory frequency knows where you are okay now there's something special here at Talladega and at Anniston you'll see this our p3 and our p5 okay looking at this diagram we can generally tell that this runway is probably runway 3 and runway two one and Anniston we can self this is probably runway five and runway two three I'll swap those around I wrote those on the wrong ends so what this is telling us what the RP is that it's a right hand traffic pattern so instead of flying left traffic to runway 3 you're actually going to fly right traffic to runway 3 this is usually because of some sort of either restricted area city limitation something like that that's blocking the traffic pattern from being a normal left-hand traffic pattern it's specific to each airport so it's something that you really have to look out for here in Talladega we can see that it looks like you have the Talladega Raceway right here so they probably don't want everyone over flying the Raceway when they're doing traffic patterns so on runway 3 you'll do a right traffic pattern to avoid over flying the Raceway up here at Aniston there's a big chemical Depot right here for the military and so if you're doing left traffic on runway 5 there's a possibility that you're gonna over fly that there's also a few other little military facilities and a big plant right here so they want you to fly right traffic to avoid over flying any of those obstacles or any of those sensitive areas if you're unsure about the direction of traffic consult the airport facility directory and it will specifically tell you if there is right traffic for a runway which runway specific altitudes if necessary and all of that other data that you need to know these Airport diagrams on the sectional chart are simply a quick reference for all the information you need while you're flying but they certainly don't replace looking at the airport facility directory which will tell you much more information about the airport what facilities are are available with these tick marks what time they are operating and exactly what procedures you need to follow when you're adding air okay now before we're done with the complete explanation of non-towered airports we have to look at just a few more symbols we're going to start off with this Airport right here st. Elmo and we can see that it looks like all of the other airports except there are no tick marks around the edge so we can tell that this st. Elmo Airport although it's a public Airport with a hard service run way longer than 1500 feet does not offer any services so if you land there you're certainly not guaranteed to get any fuel or any other services that you might need okay the next symbol that we're going to look at is this R in just a blank circle and that's going to be generally a private airfield or restricted airfield where you have to obtain some owners special use somebody's you know farm airstrip that they have or a private lodge those kinds of things are going to have private restricted airfields just underneath that you have just this blank circle what that is is that's a non-towered Airport with a non hard-surface runway so that's going to be something like turf or dirt or gravel or something like that but there's no hard surface runway at that Airport however it's not restricted and it is a public use Airport you can see here that the name of it is Ray and the runway whatever it is is 2,000 feet long okay moving up here to this silver Hill it's actually a naval operations field it looks like but it's unverified so there is an airport there according to the last information the FAA has but they're not able to verify the exact location or what exactly is available there so if you see a u that just means that that something's there but they're not sure and that should just be used strictly for emergency purposes unless you happen to specifically know the owner or what's with that Airport now let's move our way over to this little symbol right here and that actually is an airport symbol it looks a little bit funny because it's showing you the runway configuration which looks like a triangle there's no services so there's no tick marks there's no rotating beacon so there's no star and the only a real indication you have is that there's actually just the airport information here off to the right but beware for these sitting around especially military installations where they have satellite airfields that's actually a satellite airfield for Pensacola for their training and make sure you you keep an eye out for those since they are actually airports out there and not some random symbol that's been placed on the sectional now what we're talking about airports with multiple runways down here we have another one you can see how the runways are depicted within the diagram they're looking at a towered Airport but just for reference here is mobile downtown and since the longest runway is longer than 8-thousand 69 feet we can see it's 9600 feet the runways are depicted as actual runways and not inside a circle finally while not technically an airport we do have seaports that are depicted on the sectional for purposes of being non-towered airports again and they're just magenta anchors with the same information as a non towered airport now there's certainly some more in-depth information about exactly what a symbol might look like for certain special cases but we're not going to get that deep into it the basics that you need to know right now are just a non-towered airport is generally a magenta circle may look something like this only in magenta as well the color magenta is the indicator for a non-towered airport also just keep an eye out for the different services offered and for the runway configuration I hope you learned something in this lesson and I look forward to seeing you again in another KL aviation lesson don't forget there's more great content at KL aviation comm [Music]

Channel: Will Liebhaber

Views: 79,925

Keywords: airport, diagram, faa, sectional, aeronautical, chart, flying, vfr, ifr, lesson, runway, control tower

Id: v1jM0yV0xbg

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2014