American vs New Zealand Airspace Classifications?

[kiwibarguy]

Morning everybody! Woohoo it's Friday!

I recently splashed out and bought 'Cargo Pilot' for my birthday. I have really been enjoying it, yes that is why my world tour has slowed down...anyway, i have been making progress with my flying but as you well know, there is so much to learn and i still have a library of questions sitting in my head.

Questions regarding airspace

Q1: http://www.caa.govt.nz/airspace/AirNavReg/...llustration.pdf Could anybody explain the difference between the pink and blue?

Q2: Is it necessary for me to contact tower on my position when flying VFR each time i enter a new airspace or does it depend on the airspace i'm in ex: c,d,e,f?

Q3: If i am required to contact tower when in vfr should i contact before, during or when i have entered that new airspace?

Q4: Does new Zealand follow the same airspace classifications and flight rules as America?

So i now have Active sky, Cargo pilot and Ai installed which has really opened up fsx for me. Also have moved up the realism settings so i have totally raised the bar on myself. Calculating fuel with payload and distance, no more stuka dives because i have approached to high, must go round, have chickens on board, must deliver to those farmers up in Kerikeri by 6pm, storm closing in. When i first started fsx i would just fly around iddily diddily dee, up we go, down we go weeeee. With Cargo Pilot and our weather of late i'm sweating bullets the entire trip!

OK how about some giving from me. I found this cool poster from C.A.A on New Zealand airspace. Check it out.

http://www.caa.govt.nz/safety_info/Posters...pace_poster.pdf

and check out all these interesting posters from C.A.A as well. i personally love the 'Dont drink and fly poster'

Have a great Friday!

[Timmo]

Hi Kiwibar guy-
Again, ill give it a shot- However, much of this has already been 'tutorialised' by the team at Flightsim.co.nz- See HERE

1) The first page of that map...im not actuall sure? Upper airspace boundaries I guess....?? Its a really poor map actually...

The different colours relate to what type of airspace the boundaries represent: Control Areas (CTA) or Control Zones (CTZ). On the second page, youll see the blue areas are directly around 'controlled' airports? These are control Zones and extend from the ground surface upwards in the vicinity of an airport and basically give a bit more 'control' to the chaos around busy airports.

Above that (that map has to be considered in 3 dimensions since altitude is important too!) are the red areas which are the Control Zones- These have a specified lower and upper limit.

There is actually a better PDF Here and a CAA booklet explaining it all too Here


2) & 3) All controlled areas (i.e. anywhere within those lines, taking altitude into account) need permission to enter BEFORE entering them (the rule of thumb is to call the controlling frequency about 10 NM before reaching the boundary). Permission needs to be obtained regardless of the type of flight (VFR or IFR) and once in you must ask permission to deviate from anything the controller has ordered you to do.

Position reporting- Obviously, before entering the controller needs to know where you are so yep- youll need to give him/her position, altitude, intentions etc etc. They will then find you on their radar screen and will then know where you are so you dont need to keep position reporting UNLESS DIRECTED TO.

Ok so when you entered the airspace, you told the controller your intentions so if those intentions were to just transit the airspace and enter into a different portion of airspace (which will be on a different frequency) then the controller will hand you off to that frequency when appropriate.

The categories of airspace are the same around the world but in NZ we only use 4 of them: A,C,D and G- These form a heirachy with Class A being alot more strictly controlled than class G (uncontrolled)...kinda like drugs

Class G you dont need to obtain permission to enter it but you still have to abide by the relevant rules and it is recommended that you contact Christchurch Information to just let them know what your plans are. They wont give you any instructions, it is meerly a safety thing to keep track of GA flights- You give them info such as time over positions, amended SAR times, ETAs and obtain area QNH information from them. FS doesnt recreate this as far as I know? You will also need to keep an ear out on the relevant frequency to ensure you know where other aircraft are and vice versa.

All of the information such as location of boundaries, lower and upper levels of CTAs, frequencies etc can be obtained from the Visual navigation charts or Visual Planning charts. If you have a local flying club, give them a ring and see if they have any superceeded VNCs for your area- They get updated so they old ones cant be used in the real world but can be very handy in FlightSim

Hope that helps- Im certainly not a guru on this so if ive got anything please let me know!

[kiwibarguy]

Hey thanks Timmo. You have cleared up alot of questions there for me AGAIN! i didn't know that flightsim had tutes so thanks for writing all this out for me, a big help.

I'm loving my flightsim! I'm 36 and finally purchased my first computer and flight sim game last year in March. So i thought 'oh yeah, this will be easy! i'll study the basics of flying, shouldn't take too long....WRONG!!!

I can't believe how much there is to know! I've caught the bug and can't stop! MUST LEARN MORE!

So thanks for helping me out mate, i really appreciate it!

Cheers

[G-HEVN]

This article explains airspace in general terms, and how it gets applied across a number of countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace_class