How do you find the limits of areas on a chart?

Judah writes:

That depends on your goal. If your goal is to stay clear of the MOA, you're
in exactly the right place - a couple of miles outside the MOA.

But the same inaccuracy could put you a couple of miles inside it.

I've never been to that area of the country myself, but it sure looks
pretty easy to navigate.

I grew up in the southwestern United States, which is why I like to
fly it in the sim. I know the general orientation of the region,
although I've discovered a lot by flying around inside of it.

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Ron Garret writes:

You are mightily confused, my friend. The Turtle MOA is (mostly) in
California, not Arizona.

The chart I'm looking at covers Arizona more than California, it
seems.

Do you see Cadiz lake?

Sure, it's huge.

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B A R R Y writes:

He's being sarcastic. I hope... G

OK

The F-16 is a subtle hint that something has gone terribly awry.

Sending aircraft up for interception must be an incredibly expensive
exercise (easily a million dollars a pop, I'd guess), so I should hope
so.

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Wizard of Draws writes:

VOR triangulation. It's technical.

It can't be that technical. I've done it (regularly in the days
before GPS). It's the map reading that's awkward, I think. It sure
was for me (I wasn't using huge folding charts, either, but it was
still awkward).

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Judah writes:

Yes. When you are driving, how do you ensure that you are maintaining a
safe distance from the guardrail, or from the car in front of or next to
you? How about from a Stop Sign or Traffic Light?

By looking out the window. I don't search for traffic lights or
guardrails on a map. If I did, I'd be tumbling down a mountainside in
no time.

Do you do this equally as well as you did the first time you got into a
car?

Pretty much, yes.

Do you need a GPS to do this?

No.

The same sort of judgement of distances is possible when piloting an
airplane. Someone who learns to fly in the real worlds learns to discern
three dimensions and estimate distance.

Depth perception doesn't work at distances of more than 15 metres or
so, so the same cues one uses in the real world also work in
simulation.

Unfortunately, this cannot be effectively done on a two-dimensional
simulator screen.

See above. It is done routinely. Additionally, full-motion
simulators use collimated projections that place everything at optical
infinity, and they work very well indeed, even though there is no
depth perception at all.

Careful calculation is not required.

It's required if the chart doesn't tell you at a glance how to
determine the boundaries of the airspace.

And certainly there is no harm in leaving yourself a bit of lattitude
if you don't have tools to do it with exacting precision.

Except when you have forbidden areas threatening on both sides.

I wonder if the advent of moving-map navigation aids has made pilots
more prone to fly closely between and around controlled airspaces.
Certainly it seems like a practical advantage of such devices,
provided that they don't fail.

I use an EHSI to fly patterns in the sim, but that is mainly because
it's so hard to look out the side windows (I hope--at least I hope
that visibility is a _lot_ better in a real aircraft).

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you look at the chart
you look at the ground
you navigate by pilotage

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
I see tons of restricted areas, MOAs, Class B, C, D, E airspace, and
the like on charts, but no clear indication of how to locate the
boundaries of these areas other than by pure guesstimate based on
looking at the chart. On rare occasions I see a radial noted as the
boundary of an area, or a radius, but in many cases there is nothing.
How in the world are you supposed to know when you are inside or
outside one of these areas, if you are not flying miles away from
them?

Yes, GPS units and some other devices may provide real-time display of
one's position with these areas superimposed, but such devices have
not always been available.

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Kev writes:

That's a good point. While you can pick out some landmarks on a sim
screen, it's very difficult to constantly rotate your view around and
get the spatial relationship that you can in real life.

True. You can look to the side or outwards at a few different angles,
but it's not instantaneous.

However, parts of the aircraft block a lot of the view when you're not
looking straight ahead, and those parts would still be there in real
life, so I still wonder about real-world visibility.

Yes, things can move quickly. That's why it takes training to become a
real life pilot. The latter must learn to be constantly aware of the
airplane's location and heading, and to stay one or more steps ahead of
the plane. It's a skill that can get rusty, for sure.

A few days ago I switched tasks to read a chart (I have to visit a Web
page for that--very awkward) and returned to the sim to discovered
that I had hit a mountain. I was checking to see if I was at a safe
altitude. Fortunately, a new Baron was waiting for my reincarnated
self at my home airport.

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Gary Drescher writes:

A joystick with a POV hat-switch makes it pretty easy to look around.

That's what I've configured, but it still is awkward. First, if you
don't turn off all the cockpit details, there's a pause as the sim
generates them when you change your viewpoint. Also, at least on my
joystick, it's hard to position the hat precisely for 45-degree
angles, and there is still some bizarre interaction with the throttle
and other controls that I don't understand. I still use it sometimes,
though. If it were instantaneous and easier to manipulate, it would
be very convenient. Maybe then I could fly patterns a little bit
easier.

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Kev writes:

Yeah, but how many simmers constantly flip their view around? Pilots
using it for practice, sure. But non-pilots wouldn't normally do it,
methinks.

I don't do it a lot, but that is more because it is so awkward than
because I don't want to. I'd certainly like to be able to just look
off to the right or left, although the aircraft blocks a lot of the
view (you can turn the aircraft off in the sim, but that's cheating a
bit).

Still, you wouldn't get the effect of easily leaning over and looking
below you (unless you had a screen below you too. Which is an
interesting idea :-)

What happens when you need to look down to the right? When I do that,
all I see is the wing. In fact, the wing is a problem on the left
side, too.

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Gig 601XL Builder writes:

While MSFS has some great scenery especially around the larger urban areas
it isn't accurate enough to navigate by especially in non-urban areas.

Actually it is. Conspicuous landmarks are often specifically included
in the database for navigation, and the general lay of the land is
very accurate. From altitude you can't easily distinguish one barn
from another, anyway, so the general view provided by the sim is
little different from the real thing. The accuracy is high, and the
only real drawback is a potential lack of resolution (depending on how
good your vision is in real life).

I've explicitly attempted pure VFR flight, following only roads or
rivers, and it works fine, even though the roads and rivers don't look
exactly as they do in real life. They are still in the same
positions, and that's what counts. I did fly to KSAN once only to
discover that I was arriving at KLAX, but that's only because I picked
the wrong interstate to follow.

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