Airspace and Reservation boundary files

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Greg Porter
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Airspace and Reservation boundary files

Post by Greg Porter » Wed May 30, 2012 12:19 pm

Just fyi, I posted this up to our AZHPA forum a few months ago. thought ya'll might like to have it as well.... here's that post:

Even if you don't have a vario that accepts and displays airspace files... read on since there are some cool maps below that you can load to Google Earth...

For many who have Flytec varios the option exists to load airspace maps that designate the airspace restrictions around airports, and maps that show other boundaries at ground level, like the indian reservations that we don't wanna land in 'cause we're not on their Christmas lists...
As I researched this I couldn't find a ready resource for our Arizona needs, so threw some things together that I hope are helpful to ya'll.

Here are some resources:

Note: To download the files below from numbers 1,2, & 3, just right click on the link and select "save target as" or "download linked file as" or some similar option that comes up, and then pick a spot on your hard drive to stick it.

1) Created a boundary map of all the Indian Reservations in Arizona since I couldn't find one. This file contains just those maps and is ready to load as a flytec airspace file.
(Note that some reservation boundaries follow winding rivers, which is difficult to map exactly and takes up valuable memory, so in those instances I drew boundaries that include the entire river and a little bit of non-indian land as I squared it off. So the bottom line is that everything within the boundary may not be indian land, but more importantly you can know with confidence that if you land outside the boundary you are on safe ground. Also, I hear that reservation boundaries change from time to time as land is swapped. I pulled this data from a Delorme 2006 map program and am not sure if anything has changed since then. As always, use at your own risk.)
http://www.porter-az.com/hg/misc/AZ_Reservations.fa5

2) For flight planning I converted the Flytec Indian Reservation file (from #1 above) to Google Earth format so you can see it in Google Earth while you plan your flight strategy. Just download this to your desktop and then double-click on it. It will automatically load 6 reservations to Google Earth (of course you have to have Google Earth installed..). The reservations are Ak Chin (S of Maricopa), Gila River (South Mountain), Papago (Coolidge), Salt River (Fountain Hills), White mountain Apache (Heber), and San Carlos Apache (San Carlos). Note that the two Apache reservations fully border each other at their North/South boundaries so they are shown for our purposes as a single large reservation.
http://www.porter-az.com/hg/misc/AZ_Reservations.kml

3) This file contains the CTRs for all B,C, and D airspaces in Arizona. Also includes the Luke SATRs AND the Arizona Indian Reservation boundaries. Ready to load as a Flytec airspace file.
http://www.porter-az.com/hg/misc/All_Arizona.fa5

4) This is really cool if you are a Google Earth nut. This is where I got the CTR boundaries and stripped them out for just Arizona.
A) View all the CTRs in the US in Google Earth - wow! (click on "Google Earth format" under "The Entire US")
B) Strip out just what you want (if you don't like #3 above) by clicking "open air format" under "The Entire US". (This takes some work to strip out what you don't want and to convert it to a Flytec file so contact me for details if you'd like.)
http://soaring.gahsys.com/Airspace/NA/HomePage.html

Lemme know if you have trouble downloading or installing any of this stuff.
See you on the hill!
Greg
Greg Porter
Mesa, Az
602 571 16seven4

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