Learning from the Aeronautical Chart User's Guide
My unavailable salvation was the FAA's Aeronautical Chart User's Guide. This document, produced by the National Aeronautical Charting Office (NACO), is intended to serve as a learning aid, a reference document, and as an introduction to the wealth of information provided on NACO's aeronautical charts and publications. It provided the answer to the student's question: The minus sign means that the Class D airspace extends to but does not include the altitude specified.
As a pilot candidate, you should be aware that the FAA publishes charts for each stage of visual flight rules (VFR) and instrument flight rules (IFR) operations. As you prepare for your checkride, you have practiced with various publications not only for training alone, but also for flight planning and the departure, enroute, approach, and taxiing phases of flight. You may not yet be aware of the variety of charts available to help you fulfill your pilot duties, or of the breadth and depth of symbols that the FAA finds necessary to show essential information in graphic or truncated form.
The Aeronautical Chart User's Guide can be your best friend at those confusing moments. One of the truly wonderful aspects of the Guide is that terms and abbreviations used within its pages are defined in the Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) Pilot/Controller Glossary, and thus should have been used by your flight and ground instructors correctly and often. The less these terms and abbreviations have been used, the less familiar you will be with them, and the greater the risk that your designated pilot examiner (DPE) may use terms that you do not understand. Worse, there's a greater likelihood that you will try to explain some aspect of an answer while groping for the proper terms, and you could sound somewhat unprepared. (When an applicant does not know proper terminology at the point of testing, that applicant is unprepared!)
For example, within the User's Guide, unless the book indicates otherwise, all miles are nautical miles, all altitudes are in feet above mean sea level (msl), and times (oh, here it comes!) are coordinated universal time (UTC), known as Zulu in the aviation community.
Occasionally, information--including symbols--can change. To be assured of having the most current information, you should refer to other sources such as notices to airmen (notams), the appropriate Airport/Facility Directory (A/FD), and the Special Notices page of the NACO Web site.
I would be remiss if I did not remind you and your flight instructor that use of obsolete charts or publications for navigation is dangerous. Some aeronautical information changes rapidly, so it is vital that pilots use only the most current information. To make certain that a chart or publication is current, you can refer to the next scheduled edition date printed on the cover. Again, consult aeronautical chart bulletins in the A/FD or NACO Web site above, as well as notams, for interim updates. Will your examiner want to know if you know this? It is possible. The Practical Test Standards preface nearly every task with element 1, calling for you do demonstrate knowledge of the subject at hand. That includes a considerable amount of aeronautical knowledge that does not immediately translate to the stick-and-rudder environment of the cockpit.
Answers exist to many of your pre-checkride questions, even if your flight or ground instructor has forgotten them--or never knew them. Not everything lies between the pages of your regulations or AIM volumes. As an example, the Aeronautical Chart User's Guide offers three sections: Section 1 includes VFR charts with explanations of what is shown and how to read or interpret the information. This section also includes discussions of VFR aeronautical chart symbols, including helicopter route charts and VFR flyway planning charts. Very little that an examiner might throw your way should take you by surprise when you've perused this information. (When you have advanced to instrument training, sections 2 and 3 discuss much of the same information from the uniquely instrument-flight-rules oriented perspective.)
Among the most common stumbling blocks I have encountered while administering checkrides to private pilot applicants is the maximum elevation figure shown on sectional charts. True, most applicants can stumble through an explanation of what these are, but training's true goal is much more than that. A quick glance at page 2 of the Aeronautical Chart User's Guide discloses the depth of detail to which chart-makers go to present to you a safe and realistic altitude. A minor detail? Not when that knowledge stands between you and an obstruction at 120 knots!
Regarding aeronautical knowledge; I have never known a DPE to have asked this particular question, but it is possible: If you find a discrepancy on an aeronautical chart such that requires you to draw (the User's Guide calls it "delineation of data") on your chart, should you do that and send it to the NACO? Yes. Mark and clearly explain the discrepancy on a current chart and mail that corrected chart to ATO-W, SSMC4 Sta. #2355, 1305 East-West Highway in Silver Spring, Maryland, 20910-3281, and NACO will promptly return to you a replacement copy. You can telephone NACO at 800/626-3677 for information. It is all a part of being a conscientious member of the aeronautical community. And that, ultimately, is what every DPE wants to know that you will be.
Dave Wilkerson is a designated pilot examiner, writer/photographer, and historian. He has been a certificated flight instructor since 1981 with approximately 2,000 hours of dual instruction, and is a single- and multiengine commercial-rated pilot.
The Aeronautical Chart User's Guide can be downloaded at AOPA Flight Training Online.
