LESSON #8

 Yesterday I had yet another ground school lesson and while I always love it when we fly, we covered some pretty cool stuff in regards to maps and air space that I found fascinating!  (Plus, the weather was absolute crap so we weren't going to fly anyway...)

First of all, the maps we looked at are called VFR Sectional Charts.  VFR stands for how I am being trained to fly with Visual Flight Rules.  (If I go on I will be trained in IFR which is Instrument Training Rules...like your jets and bigger air craft).  Anyway, this sectional chart is like a map for the sky.  You can see some of the identifiers of the ground, but it gives you so much other information that as a pilot you need to know.  Here are a couple of examples....one from the town I currently live in and the other from Stafford airport -- the one I used to fly out of with my parent's friend Terry:

Let's start with Stafford because it's small and simple.  You'll notice that Stafford is in red letters and has this written underneath "1886 L 25 122.9 C" (and the C is inside  a red circle).  This is what those numbers and letters represent: the 1886 is the elevation of the airport at sea level.  The L stands for the fact that the lights are ON all the time.  This is actually a pretty rare thing for a small airport.  I will come back to that later, but most small airports that don't have a tower turn their lights off.  The 122.9 is the radio for UNICOM which means you'd have to find out where to go for gas that was close (as the airport doesn't provide -- but another sign I will get to yet there as well) and then the C inside a red circle tells me that I have to use CTAF which is Common Traffic Advisory Frequency.  Basically, you don't have to call the tower (since there isn't one) but it is smart to just call over the radio waves and let other possible pilots in the area to know "Hey!  I'm over Stafford -- if any other pilots are as well, just know I'm about to land!"  You'll also notice that there's a thick red circle with a star above it that has a hole in it.  The red circle means you can't get fuel here (which is why they notified you to call 122.9 to find out the closest gassing airport) and the star with a hole in it indicates there is a rotating beacon that is on 24 hours.  The little A shaped looking mountains?  Those are cell towers 

Now for Hickman...

It's a little more congested but the basics there are -- see all the R with a circle around them?  Those are private air fields.  You might notice MUELLER FIELD.  That is less than a mile from my house and it is owned by a guy my father-in-law was good friends with for many years.  We used to see his plane fly over all the time, but he has health issues so we don't see it as much now.  From what I learned yesterday, it costs money to make sure your name is on this map.  I'm not sure if it is substantial, but I found that interesting.

There's a pretty substantial key/legend that goes with all these maps, but I found it fascinating (again) how much information is in this sucker.  I wanted to purchase some hard copies (I have versions of these on my ForeFlight app which we use a lot) but there was something to being able to see it all on paper too, so I ordered one for Lincoln and for my home town.  Get this, these maps are updated MONTHLY.  In fact, when I ordered them, I was asked if I wanted an one-time purchase or a subscription!  I found that interesting.  If you think about our road maps they are typically only updated once a year.  I still have to look up a lot to know what everything means, but I'm looking forward to understanding this "pilot language" too.

Also, in regards to maps and smaller airports...guess what a pilot can do when flying over small airports at night?  Turn their lights on.  That's right, a pilot from his cockpit can turn on the lights of an airport below if it is one that turns their lights off (unlike Stafford which leaves their lights on all the time!)  So, let's say I'm flying over the Seward airport at night.  Their lights are off, but I want to land.  If I click my button on my controls (like I was going to call the Tower) 3 times in 5 seconds, it turns the lights on.  If I click it 5 times in 5 second it brightens them up and 7 times in 5 seconds gives me the lights at their brightest level! Isn't that cool?

Finally, another little tidbit I found interesting was in regards to safety belts.  We went over a long list of items that had to check out otherwise, you can't fly and one of them was the safety belts.  I asked my instructor Matt -- "Okay, now I get we need to wear them, but seriously, if you crash what good will the safety belt really do?  I mean, you're going down..."  He kinda laughed and said, "Well, in bad turbulence you want them.  They keep you in your seat and keep you from hitting your head.  But if you crash you know the best thing to do? Open your doors.  That way if you survive, you can get out of the fuselage.  Many times people can get trapped inside because of how the plane crashes so opening your door helps that."  Good to know Matt!  Thanks for sharing!

And on that positive note, I will end! LOL!