Session 5 Sample - Airspace

welcome to US Private Pilot Ground School Session 5. In this

session

we will look at the complex system of aeronautical

airspace

in the US. Hopefully, we will address what is sometimes a bit problematic for pilots in terms of remembering everything. of the ins and outs of this complex thing called

airspace

and we're going to take it and break it down so it's understandable and easy. You may know absolutely nothing about airspace, but by the end of this

session

you will know that you are an airspace expert, you may be a registered pilot looking for a refresher and simply want to knock some of the rust off of your airspace knowledge. air space.

It's easy to get rusty because pilots don't actually use all the airspace every time they fly. Sometimes we are not even sure what airspace we are flying in. I know I've asked plenty of pilots during a flight, but that won't be you after this session, so let's get started before we jump into the airspace. I want to talk just a little bit. a little bit about the various charts we have available, there are three in particular worth mentioning, the first and the one you'll use most often is called a sectional chart and of course you're looking at the United States.

Here and how the charts break down by major cities, there are 37 sectional charts that make up the lower 48 states and of course the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are also available. These sectionals are double sided and their scale is one. to five hundred thousand, so they cover a good distance and have great detail about the topography and the different types of airspace that will be color coded, we will learn all about the obstacles, the airports, almost everything that you want to have. On a good chart, there are what are called terminal area charts or tac tac and they are in selected areas that are the busiest of the busiest areas and they are demonstrated here with these little gray boxes that we see everywhere in Atlanta. area for example will have a terminal chart and that will be twice the scale of a sectional, in other words scale 1 to 250,000, so it looks twice as big and in those complex areas it is good to have better details In the other way is the coup or world aeronautical chart, that scale is one to a million, so if you are planning a long trip and want to get a bird's eye view of your trip, your maps and your planning at one blow. or a world aeronautical chart is a great thing to use this is an example of a sectional chart there again you can see the 37 charts that are available for these regions that we are looking at here in the Los Angeles sectional chart something important worth noting What is known is that these are typically updated every six or seven months in some places like Alaska.

I think it's about five months, so you need to pay attention to the dates and the dates will be listed here from this date to this date, so let's take a look at the airspace, now the FAA divides the airspace into two types of categories or main areas, the first is class airspace and it receives an alphabetical designation like a b c and so on and then there is special use airspace, this would be like military practice areas or restricted areas, so we will look at both today, but first we will start with the class a to g airspace system, just to give us a little overview, this is the airspace from a to g, except f Anyway, there is no f no in the United States and if we start very simply and I don't want you to get overwhelmed with this because I'm going to move pretty quickly, but this is just an overview that we're going to take each of us.

Take one of these air class airspace systems apart and unpack them for you, but just as an introduction, look at the one above here, we can see that class a or alpha is very high airspace, it starts at eighteen thousand feet, that It is msl and it is found. for mean sea level, eighteen thousand feet above sea and extends up to flight level sixty thousand, once we get above eighteen thousand we put things in terms of what are called flight levels and we simply eliminate the two zeros at the end, so this is in hundreds of feet, we would add two zeros to that and we would get sixty thousand feet, so you can bet that when you fly on that plane you are in the alpha class, now to be in the alpha class you have to be ifr and about an ifr flight plan we'll talk a little bit more about that of course one thing we learned in the previous sessions if you joined us is that above eighteen thousand all altimeters should also be set to two nine nine two per below eighteen. thousand feet we enter class e or echo airspace, think about e is everywhere where there is no airport so class e if you are flying somewhere and you are not sure exactly what type of airspace you are flying in and no we are close to an airport, most likely you can be sure to answer class e and you are probably right, we will see it and as we get closer to the ground and close to the airports that are not control tower airports, we will get at what which is called class g and that is more uncontrolled airspace and then if we go into tower controlled airports, we go into class b for the largest, c for the next one and d, the three b, c and d have and what they have in common.

It's a control tower and yet some of the requirements for entering that airspace are a little bit different, so we'll look at all of this as we go through this session, what we'll do is talk about each of these airspaces. in terms of five attributes the dimensions of the airspace laterally and vertically the requirements to enter what do I have to do to obtain permission also what type of equipment or are there certain restrictions for what type of aircraft or type of equipment on board the aircraft, uh, to enter to that airspace, we will also find that there are weather requirements in the airspace, we need to have a certain amount of cloud distance requirements or visibility requirements, we will look at that and then in some cases, there are some restrictions for the pilots as to who or what type of certified pilot can enter that airspace, so let's break down each of these airspaces again in terms of these five things.

First I'll start with class d now, that seems like a strange place to start, obviously it seems more logical to start with a, however first we want to look at all the tower controlled airports, let's start there and what we're doing is starting with the smallest of the airports controlled by the tower first and that is class d, it is the simplest, the airspace is usually a cylindrical formation, here we have a four mile radius usually, but not always, so you need to look the table and see what the airspace is like. specifically plotted, but on average four miles and 2500 feet above ground level, you can see in a sort of 3D image here what it would look like on the chart and extending upwards, technically this plane you see in the image is not on the airspace, so you are not required to do anything that requires you to communicate or maintain weather criteria or anything else.

You're outside that airspace and technically you don't even need to talk to the control tower, although it looks like you're very close. to dip that wing into it, what does class d look like on the chart? It is a dashed blue line. This is where not being color blind comes in handy, so we need to be able to see our colors on our chart and in class d. We can see that we have a dashed blue line, but we also see that there is a magenta line that extends all the way here. Let's save that topic for a little later, but now we want to focus on the class d itself, now the dimensions would be like layout, we would have to measure that to see what it actually ended up being, but usually again a four mile radius and usually up to 2500 feet above the ground now this altitude here in parentheses or in the box is in hundreds of feet and that is not agl but it is msl one of the things you need to keep in mind is the difference between msl and agl msl again is a height above the c o mean sea level and agl is the altitude above ground level so you said normally class d goes up to 2500 feet above sea level and this number is in msl now why is it 2600 and not 2500?

The reason is that the airport itself is 72 feet above the sea, which is close enough for about 100 feet, so if we took 2500 and added 72 we would get 2572 and just rounded up to 2600 feet. The nice thing about this is that your altimeter reads in msl and this number is in msl, so as long as your altimeter is above 2600, you could be like that plane right above you and you're not flying on it. What should we do to enter a simple tower controlled airport like a class D airport? You need to have two-way contact, that's what's required now.

It's two way contact, well that's just using your radio on board the plane, of course we're not talking about a music radio, instead we're talking about a type of two way radio communication, which means you can transmit and receive . You also have to have done that to get permission to enter the airspace, what do I mean? If you transmitted but didn't receive anything in return, didn't receive anything from the controller in the tower, then you can't enter that. airspace because the requirement is two-way contact and that specifically means you address the controller, the controller addresses you now here's the key, how do you address? you need to use the n numbers of your aircraft, the n numbers are the registration numbers of the plane it is written in large letters on the side of the plane and every time you make a radio call to whoever you are talking to you always start with the numbers of your plane, it's kind of like your name, so if, for example, we were cessna november one two three four five and I called the controller and he came back and said cessna one two three four five at that time we have established two-way contact now we wait more from him, he should give us some instructions like how he wants us to enter his airspace, what runway he wants to assign us to land on things like that, so those will be all the instructions to follow, but the moment they gave me back my number n, that was the moment I set the communications requirement, which is The main and really only requirement to enter that type of airspace, so I can enter that airspace bubble with that, even if he said or she said November one, two , three, four five, wait and I give that pose to many students.

I work with and many times the answer I get is no, I can't get in. I am not authorized to enter that airspace and the understanding is that once we have been given the n number that we have established for a contact, we can enter. even if they say on hold, it doesn't mean stay out, it just means on hold for future communication. I know where you are. I know how you're going to get in. You can go ahead and do it. I'll call you right away. now if the controller said the aircraft is calling on hold, now you have used a generic term, the word aircraft, you have not addressed my final numbers and I am not good at entering that airspace, it is important to have a good understanding of the contact two way, that frequency will be on the chart, it will be on various resources that will give you all the information about the airport and the frequency to get to the control tower, of course for this to happen you must have a two way radio at a minimum. to be a student pilot, so there are really no restrictions here on the type of pilot requirements as long as you have a student pilot certificate and I would also add that you would need to get your instructor to approve you to go to that airport, assuming this does not be your home base, then you're ready to go.

Climatic requirements. We normally talk when we talk about climate requirements. We talk about visibility that you can see ahead and how far from the clouds you should be or stay that way. In terms of visibility, we always measure visibility in miles and specifically in statute miles, so we need in class D, we need at least three statute miles of visibility and that will be given in the weather report that we can tune into our radios before calling . the control tower to get permission to enter that airspace, so let's listen to that, we make sure we have that minimum now, that's a minimum if you watched our last session in session four on regulations, one thing I mentioned was that the rules are always the minimum.

The best rule of thumb is that you take any regulation and double it, especially when it comes to numbers like this, so if three miles is the minimum, you might do better if I choose six as a personal minimum, it's up to you as a Student Pilot, Your instructor will give you some limitations in your logbook, so you won't have much say in the matter except that you might even exceed that and have an even higher minimum personally, but we always recommend that you think about that when you look at these minimums, three statute miles of visibility and then from the clouds, we need to be at 500 feetbelow a cloud platform or a thousand feet above them if we travel above them now as a student, you are not allowed. go above the clouds and for a very good reason you could get stuck there and not be able to come back down except to go through the clouds and that's pretty much an emergency situation so you don't want to get into a bind like that recommends staying below and if the clouds are too low to fly, then it's just a day when you cancel the flight.

The other thing is that the distance from the cloud must be 2000 feet horizontally, that is, about half a mile away from the clouds. One of the reasons is that you certainly don't. If you want to accidentally go into the cloud as a VFR pilot, that would be very dangerous, you could lose control of the plane, but of course we are giving you private pilot training that will help you. if you find yourself in that situation. You need about three hours of minimum training just flying with reference to instruments if that were to happen, but the other thing about being near a cloud is that there may be IFR traffic that is allowed to be inside that cloud talking. to a controller and you may be outside that area and not talking to the controller; in some cases, that plane can come out of that cloud and then you're in front of that plane, so you have some distance between you and the cloud.

It's a very good idea, so think about it as not just staying out of the cloud, but giving yourself some leeway so that if there's another plane that passes through that cloud, you don't get tangled up with them.