Ground school lesson
Reading a sectional chart
The sectional is the one document that shows every airport, every airspace boundary and every obstacle on your route. Learn its colour code and it reads like a road map.
What you will be able to do
- Tell towered from non-towered airports at a glance.
- Read the airspace colour code and the numbers on its boundaries.
- Navigate a leg by pilotage and dead reckoning.
-
Step 1 of 3
Airports and the colour code
On the chart Means Blue airport symbol Towered airport. As a sport pilot: endorsement territory. Magenta airport symbol Non-towered. Most gyroplane flying lives here. Solid blue rings Class B shelves. Explicit clearance required. Solid magenta rings Class C. Two-way radio contact required. Dashed blue circle Class D around a towered field. Magenta shading (vignette) Class E starting at 700 ft AGL: instrument approaches descend here. Airspace boundaries carry their floors and ceilings in hundreds of feet MSL printed on the chart, which is why the chart, not a memory of typical shapes, is what you plan from. The full legend rides on every chart's margin.
-
Step 2 of 3
Pilotage and dead reckoning
Pilotage
Navigating by looking: fly from checkpoint to checkpoint, matching lakes, highways, towns and rail lines on the ground to their chart symbols. At gyroplane speeds and altitudes it is a genuine pleasure, and it is the backbone skill.
Dead reckoning
The arithmetic backup: from a known point, heading plus speed plus time predicts where you are. Plan each leg's course, distance and time before you fly, and the two methods cross-check each other the whole way.
GPS is welcome aboard and no substitute for either. Batteries die, signals drop, and the sport pilot knowledge test is written assuming you can navigate with the chart alone. Fly with the GPS; plan as if you had none.
-
Step 3 of 3
Obstacles, terrain and the numbers that keep you honest
Read before every cross-country
- Obstacle symbols carry two numbers: height above sea level, and in parentheses height above the ground. Towers with lit symbols still assume you looked.
- Maximum elevation figures, the large numbers in each grid box, give an altitude clearing everything in that box.
- Airport data blocks list field elevation, runway length and the CTAF, three of the numbers your flight planning lesson needs.
- Charts expire. Print dates are on the cover; plan from a current one, paper or an updated app.
Best practice run: pull the free current sectional for your home field on the FAA's site, find your airport, and trace what every symbol within ten miles means against the legend.
Check yourself
3 questions. Pick an answer to see whether it is right and why.
-
On a sectional, a magenta airport symbol means what?
Magenta marks non-towered fields, blue marks towered ones, which as a sport pilot also flags where your airspace endorsement applies.
-
The magenta vignette (gradient shading) around an airport shows what?
The magenta vignette lowers the Class E floor to 700 ft AGL, typically protecting instrument approaches descending toward the airport.
-
What is pilotage?
Pilotage is checkpoint-to-checkpoint navigation by visual reference, cross-checked by dead reckoning's heading-speed-time arithmetic.
Reading and practice are free. Create an account to save progress and private notes.
FAA Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, navigation and charts chapters, and the FAA Aeronautical Chart User's Guide (public domain). Current charts: faa.gov.