Interactive Quiz #72:
Grab Those VFR Sectional Charts And Fly

FAR 91.103 says that you need "all available information" before launching on any flight. Yeah, right. Where's a PIC supposed to glean all that stuff? Surprisingly, much of what you need -- IFR or VFR -- is on the lowly VFR sectional chart. But you need to decode a few things ...

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer the questions as best you can, then click on the "Score my quiz answers" button to see your score and read the explanations. If you don't like your score the first time around, you can change some of your answers and resubmit. To get the most out of this quiz, we suggest you keep trying until you get a perfect score.

NOTE: When more than one answer is true, only the most complete correct answer will be scored as correct.

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1. Your destination, The Columbia Inn Airport located just outside Pine Tree, Vt., is depicted with a magenta circle that has four "ticks" on it. What do these "ticks" tell you?
a. Controlled airspace (has a control tower)
b. Services -- fuel available
c. Uncontrolled airspace (no control tower)
d. Risk of contracting Lyme disease from ticks is high

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2. A magenta-filled circle depicts Marshalltown (Iowa) Airport with two white lines indicating the runway layout. Beside one runway is a white dot, which shows the approximate position of the Elmwood VOR. (See illustration below.)
a. True.
b. False.

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3. Knoxville Airport has a flag overhead, while Pella Airport to the northeast has no flag. What does the flag indicate? (See illustration below.)
a. Golf course suitable for emergency landing
b. Mandatory VFR reporting point
c. Visual checkpoint
d. Flight Service Station on field

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4. Victor 6 (V 6) between the Grand Island and North Platte VORTACs has "111" inside a box located about halfway along the airway. This indicates what? (See illustration below.)
a. A Change Over Point (COP)
b. Distance between Grand Island and North Plate in statute miles
c. Distance between Grand Island and North Plate in nautical miles
d. Minimum Safe Altitude in hundreds of feet along the airway (11,100 feet MSL)

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5. Heading northwest through the Dakotas for the first time you discover -- as Lewis and Clark did 200 years earlier -- that the terrain rises. Looking at your sectional you see a fat number 3 with a smaller number 3 beside it inside a box (quadrangle) formed by lat/long lines. This is a Maximum Elevation Figure and indicates the height of what? (See illustration below.)
a. The highest known feature inside the quadrangle including terrain and obstructions (trees, towers, antennas, etc.)
b. The highest known terrain feature inside the quadrangle excluding obstructions (trees, towers, antennas, etc.)
c. The highest known feature inside the quadrangle including terrain and obstructions (towers, antennas, etc.) but excluding trees because they keep growing.
d. The highest known feature inside the quadrangle including terrain and trees but excluding obstructions (man-made towers, antennas, etc.).

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6. Bored flying over Illinois? No problem: Punch "direct-to" C16 into your GPS and head to Frasca Field in Urbana just north of Champaign. This is the home of Frasca International, the flight sim makers. It's also home to the Frasca Airplane museum, making it a cool place to stop for gas, especially when Rudy Frasca is out flying his Spitfire. Now, imagine that 20 miles out your radio quits. No problem. Frasca Field is inside Class G airspace so no radio is required. It's VFR and you slip beneath the Champaign Class C airspace and are about to enter the Frasca traffic pattern when you see "RP 27" printed immediately above the airport symbol. Granted, you should be flying the airplane and not reading the sectional at this point, but what does "RP 27" mean? (See illustration below.)
a. Runway paved and 2700 feet long.
b. Right traffic pattern for runway 27.
c. Right traffic pattern for runway 27 and runway 9.
d. It's Rudy's Place (private airport) and Runway 27 is preferred (winds are generally westerly).

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7. Same airspace as in question 6. Your instrument-rated cousin, Earl, flew IFR into Champaign's University of Illinois Willard Airport. Earl is good on the gauges but lousy on short-field landings and needs lots of runway to get stopped. Referring to the airport symbol at the center of Champaign's Class C airspace, you instantly realize that the longest runway is greater than ________ feet long. Choose the best answer.
a. 10,000
b. 9069
c. 8069
d. 7069

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8. Same airport as in question 7. The control tower frequency is listed with a star at the end. The star indicates:
a. Poor service as rated by IFR magazine: Five stars indicate excellent, while one star is barely safe
b. Tower operates part-time
c. Tower receives on one frequency and transmits over the VOR
d. ATIS information is delivered on tower frequency

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9. Returning from the annual Antique Blender Collectors Show at Margaritaville, Texas -- where you'd been looking for a long lost shaker of salt -- you're about 10 miles northeast of Gainesville Airport, headed southwest, when you see a thick white, east-to-west line on the sectional chart crossing your projected flight path. Written inside that white line is "TAC." What is "TAC"? (See illustration below.)
a. Tactical Air Command. It's Special Use Airspace (SUA, see Quiz #71). Run away, run away!
b. Terminal Area Chart
c. Terminal Approach Chart
d. Transition Area Chart
e. Texas Air Corridor

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10. On the border of Alabama and Tennessee is an obstruction with lightning bolts escaping the top and two numbers listed: 2187 and below that (1347). Why the two numbers? (See illustration below.)
a. Top number is height of the obstacle AGL in feet and the lower number is height AGL in meters (for ICAO)
b. The obstruction looks taller when coming from Tennessee.
c. The higher number is the elevation of the obstruction's base above mean sea level (MSL) and the lower number is height above ground.
d. The higher number is the elevation of the obstruction's top above mean sea level (MSL) and the lower number is height above ground.

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