Tonight’s class was all about charts. The primary chart we use for VFR flight in our area is the Charlotte sectional chart. The country is dividend into some number of sections and 1:500,000 scale charts are available for each section. They’re named after the major city that’s covered in that section. The Charlotte sectional covers middle and eastern NC and part of SC.
Sectionals have thousands and thousands of bits of information. We covered almost every symbol on the chart: airports, airport types and features, frequencies, airspace boundaries, major roads, towers, rivers, lakes, mountains, dams, power plants, race tracks, restricted and military operating areas, VOR and NDB navigation equipment, and anything else significant that could be used to identify your location.
I like maps, so it was a fun class. I remember when I first looked at the sectional a few months ago wondering how in the world anyone can read this thing. Now I have trouble finding anything on it that I don’t understand. Next week we’ll cover how to use it to plan routes and get to where we want to go.
As I rode my motorcycle back home from class, there were a couple fire trucks on the side of US1. They had set flares to block the right lane. As I approached, I saw a car that had run off the road, crashing through the end of a guard rail and stopped head on into the bank under a bridge. It didn’t look like anyone was panicing, so I think it was relatively minor, but I thought to myself, “Man, those cars sure are dangerous.” 🙂