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couldn’t write my own notes. I got out my logbook and drew a line for every flight. I wrote “weekend sailboat races” next to Cormorant Lake, “fly fishing for brown trout” next to the Straight River, “Continental Divide” between the James and Sheyenne Rivers. And, yes, I wrote “Perimeter Area Radar: Avoid!” next to the buildings west of Cavalier. If I have a story, a bit of personal history or local lore, I write it on an old sectional. If I have a desire for some future flight, that goes on the old map too. My friend Mike Paulson has promised to show me the inter-lake paddleboat trail in western Minnesota. I’ve promised myself the path of the Pony Express. Sometimes the places we desire appear like Brigadoon overnight and disappear just as quickly. On the morning television weather report, we often see maps of last night’s rain or snowstorm, maps of storm totals and locations. Not so long ago, the map showed two and a half inches of rain from a Memorial Day storm just north of town. I wanted some time in the air and a new place to visit. One inch of rain over one

acre of land weighs more than 113 tons. This storm dropped 283 tons of water per acre: 67,885 gallons of water per acre. The next morning I was at 1,500 feet agl, following the rain paths, amazed. The Coteau des Prairies rises in front of me, brown and green and beautiful in early fall daylight. I fly low, and from here I can easily imagine the advancing glaciers, the push and the resistance and then the breaking into two. The map in the Garmin G1000 is almost irrelevant today. Because of a different map I know I am flying over the bed of Pleistocene Lake Agassiz. Because of different maps I know the annual rainfall and population density. I know what types of rock rest under the soil and what crops were planted this year. You could call it situational awareness. The Earth is simply more beautiful, and flying more rewarding, when you understand more deeply where you are. Destination, he said, is mere pretext for the real business of going to meet it.
W. Scott Olsen is an English professor at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.

BARNSTORMER’S HELPER
Notes about farms and ditches formed the basis of the modern chart The paper VFR sectional chart you carry in the cockpit has its origins in the days of barnstorming and the first airmail pilots. In the late 1920s and 1930s, with virtually no navigation infrastructure, pilots followed railroads and other landmarks from airport to airport. One of these pilots, Elrey Borge Jeppesen—yes, that Jeppesen—kept a small notebook in which he recorded such things as elevation, terrain and topography, obstacles, which way field drainage ran, and other landing sites (just in case). When other pilots heard about Jeppesen’s book, they wanted a copy; he handed them out at first and began selling them as word got around and demand grew. Business was so good that he founded Jeppesen & Co. in 1934. As the navigation infrastructure evolved, Jeppesen’s charts evolved with it, and he is widely credited as the creator of the first instrument charts. Today, the company (now owned by Boeing) remains a big player in aviation navigation and training tools. It still sells paper charts, as do a few other private companies, but is also well-known for digital products. The FAA’s Aeronautical Navigation Productions division in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, produces aeronautical charts—paper and digital—that it distributes directly to the public and through a network of chart agents. —Jill W. Tallman

NEW YORK'S LA GUARDIA AIRPORT (LGA) 1941 on left, same chart today on right.

COURTESY JEPPESEN

JULY 2012 FLIGHT TRAINING

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Flight Training - July 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - July 2012