PowerFlarm at Region 9 Contest

John, look at the IFR Low Altitude charts for your area. The IFR High
Altitude charts may also have some points of interest to you.

Note: I'm not current on instruments any more and some of the names I've
used may no longer be applicable.

You're absolutely correct that a face to face chat with a current instrument
pilot would be best.

"John Carlyle" wrote in message
...
On Jun 12, 2:19 pm, Doug Mueller wrote:
Hi John, I applaud you for wanting to learn more. It is often an
overlooked
or forgotten concept in soaring. Most pilots who get their PPL in gliders
think thats all there is to know aside from badge flying and contest
prep.
If one was to pursue a
powered rating they would quickly realize the short sided philosophy.
There
are commercially available courses out there offered by Jeppeson and by
King courses to name a couple on airspace. By looking at airspace use by
the IFR pilot you
can come to the conclusions you have already with VOR's. Although VOR's
are
going to the wayside, it would be good to understand the Lat Long
structure
of GPS. In the IFR world, due to airspace consolidation, aircraft are now
flying along
GPS coordinate system waypoints. There are preferential National Airspace
routing system wayponts in the continental United States. Airspace
highways
for transcontinental flight if you will. Airspace is the most often
misunderstood concept
even in powered flight. It can get you in the most trouble as well. It is
understandable that emphasis is not placed on airspace in the glider
ratings but for the pilots wishing to persue X-C flight, it becomes
critically important to understand. In
the interest of safety I would be glad to answer any questions you might
have if you use this public forum so all could read and understand. Doug

Doug,

Thanks for the offer. The problem with doing such learning via RAS is
that we need more than words only because of the complexity of the
topic and the need to refer to Sectionals, TACs and Approach Plates.
In my case, it also involves learning the proper terminology before
writing! So I think I'm going to have to stick to face to face
conversations.

However, I would like to ask about the King or Jeppesen courses that
you mentioned. I would suspect that commercial courses would be geared
towards obtaining an IFR rating, and as such would be way over the top
for my needs. What I'm looking for instead is knowledge covering IFR
flight paths below 10,000 feet, with emphasis on safely conducting a
VFR flight that cannot maintain alititude while sharing class E
airspace with IFR traffic, particularly in the vicinity (say, 20
miles) of a class B or C boundary. Ideally, I'd like to come away with
the ability to mark up a sectional chart (and in future my moving map
airspace file) with areas to stay away from in my non-altitude
maintaining glider, given that PHL, EWR and JFK are using approaches
X, Y and Z today.

You mentioned the GPS coordinate system waypoints, which is another
complication for me. Some, but not all, are marked on sectionals. This
makes it difficult to take information from an approach plate and
transfer the data to a sectional. I've found that some approaches (for
example, see the one going into EWR that goes through SWEET at 7,000
feet) is marked on the NY TAC, but not marked on a sectional. There
are others (such as the ones that use SPUDS or BUNTS going into PHL)
that aren't marked on either the sectional or the PHL TAC, and don't
have airways associated with them, either. The IFR traffic is
expecting 8,000 feet at these points outside the class B, and
descending to 5,000 feet to points just inside the class B. I'm still
trying to make a map so I can stay away from these approach paths, and
getting more confused...

-John, Q3