Hi, I'm Hetty Carlson, and I am the Teacher Flight Program Manager for Wings
Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. And today, we are going to be talking
about navigation basics, as well as introduction to aeronautical charts.
The best way to introduce charts to your students is to talk about map basics, and
when I say map basics, I mean talk about longitude and latitude and relation to
the globe. On our chart, we can see that we have lines of latitude, and it might
be a little bit difficult to see right here. And then we have our longitudinal
lines going this way, and obviously they increase in degree from the equator,
north and south. They're all measured in degrees and minutes. Another really
important thing is for students to learn how to read a compass rose and learn
their cardinal directions, and what I mean by cardinal directions is the
number as it correlates to north, east, south and west, such as 360, degrees 90
degrees, 180 degrees and west, 270 degrees. What may come as a surprise to you is
that there are two north poles, and what I mean by that is there is the true
north, which is a geographical point on the globe, and it's where the axis runs
from north to south. Then there's also the magnetic north, and that is basically
an ore deposit that is located somewhere around the Arctic Circle. The difference
between true north and magnetic north is called variation or declination. And, if
you look at our chart, you can see a magenta segmented line, and these are
called isogonic lines, and basically they change depending on where they are on
the globe. When we talk about referencing charts or maps, we talk about true north,
but pilots, when they fly an airplane, they fly in reference to magnetic north,
which means they fly with a compass, so their headings are always going to be
magnetic. If you look right here, 8 degrees 15
minutes east, that means, if our true course or true
north direction is 360 degrees, we're going to subtract 8 degrees from that to
get our magnetic heading. Now, I've been referring to maps, and I've also been
referring to charts. And what I mean by a chart, I mean an aeronautical chart, and
this is basically what pilots use, or VFR pilots use, for navigational purposes. So,
if we look at this chart, this is what's called a terminal area chart, or a TAC
chart. The scale of this chart is one to 250,000. And we also have sectional
charts, and these just kind of emphasize visual check points and topographical
information. Our terminal area charts are usually reissued every six months, but
you don't want to wait six months before you check to make sure that there's not
a supplement that has come out. So, this chart was issued in January of this year,
but, as you can see right here, Front Range Airport the identifier is FTG,
while this airport is no longer called Front Range Airport. It is now Colorado
Air and Space Port, and there is also a new ICAO identifier of KCFO. Some of the
information that is shown on charts are cultural, such as towns, roads, power lines
and just developments. So, as you can see in our chart, we have the metropolitan
area. Charts also give us geographic information, such as topography, elevation,
rivers and lakes. So as you can see right here, we have Aurora Reservoir.
Out here, we have the Cherry Creek Reservoir, as well as the Cherry Creek
Dam. And it gives you a good reference for that, and where it is in relation to
Centennial Airport. Our chart gives us airspace information, such as, around
Centennial Airport, we have a dashed blue line, which represents class delta
airspace. And we also have down here nautical miles, statute miles and
kilometers, just for reference. One of the greatest things about aeronautic charts
is, if you ever have any questions about something that you don't recognize or
unfamiliar with, you can always flip back to the other side and look at the legend
here, and it has some great information on here, as well. Another really fun thing
to do with students is to have them just find airports on the chart. For example
we have Centennial Airport right here, and that's where we are located right
now at the Exploration of Flight. We also have Front Range Airport, which is
actually very close to Denver International Airport, and pretty much
everyone knows where Denver International Airport is. And then over
here to our west, we have Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport. One of the last
things we're going to talk about is our airport data block, and basically our
airport data block gives us information about the airport without ever having to
look elsewhere. So, if we look at our first data block, we're going to look at
Centennial Airport. And, if you notice here, there's a star right above the
east-west runway, which notates that this airport has a rotating beacon. It also
gives you the general area of where the tower is. The identifier is APA, that's
the ICAO identifier, which is the International Civil Aviation
Organization. And all the airports in the world have their own identifiers. We
use "K" in front of all of our identifiers for the United States. If you
look at the second line, it says "CT." That means this has a control
tower. The frequency for our control tower is 118.9. It also has an ATIS,
or an automated terminal information system. On the third line, we have our
elevation of the airport, so 5,885 feet.
The "L" stands for lighting, which means that this Airport is lit. And, because
there is no star, and, if we want to look at a star, we can look over at Front
Range Airport, before the L, we have a star, which means that it's only a
part-time tower, which means that the lighting has to be controlled by the
pilot, when they come in. If there are no lights, they usually use their microphone
to click three, five or seven times, depending on the intensity of lights.
The next number is the length of the longest runway at this airport. For Centennial
Airport, our longest runway is 10,000 feet. So this is given in
hundreds of feet, so 100 times 100 is 10,000. And then, right here, we also
have 122.95, which is going to be our CTF or UNICOM
frequency. So, if there's not enough information, or, if we want more
information, we have our handy-dandy airport directory. This is, of course, my
favorite airport directory. It is put out by CDOT Division of Aeronautics. The
great thing about this is, if you turn to any of the airports in here, it gives you
a color picture, and it's an aerial picture of what that airport looks like.
So, as you're flying in, you have a visual reference as well. It also gives you
information about latitude, longitude, elevation, any navigational aids,
such as our VORs or GPS, ILS, which is something that we don't need to worry
about today. It also gives us information about runways length, whether or not
this airport has any services, such as fuel. Places that you can find
aeronautical charts, so that you can let your students look at them and study
them and just kind of get a good introduction to them, is going to your
local, fixed-based operator or going to the FAA.gov website, and they have free
downloadable links. Another really good website, VFRmap.com, which is great for
just viewing charts and for training. And then, there's also Sky Vector. SkyVector.com
is great for flight planning abilities. And you can actually do that
with a digital map or a digital chart. So, in conclusion, today we talked about maps
and charts and some of the similarities and some of the differences. What kinds
of charts that VFR, or visual flight rule pilots, use for navigational reference.
Next time, we'll be talking about airspace classification.