Hey guys, what's up? John from flatmichaelpha.com and today we're going to be talking about class G airspace. So the good stuff, the stuff that is uncontrolled, class G airspace, where it is, how to identify it on the chart, and what are the altitudes associated with it, where are you going to encounter it.
So class G airspace, think about G in ground, right? Class G airspace is near the ground. It's going to be everywhere.
It is the default airspace because it's uncontrolled airspace. Everywhere touching the ground. Then you'll also hear something that's a little bit outdated. You'll hear that Class G airspace goes from the surface on up to 14,500 feet MSL. Now this 14,500 foot MSL value, yes, that's in the book.
Yes, that's a regulation in the FAR-AIM, but it's not really used anymore. It's really... been brought down with Class E airspace. So although you'll hear that number thrown around a lot, and you'll hear on your written exam, class G airspace goes up to 14,500 feet MSL. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In reality, it doesn't. It goes from the ground up to 1200 feet MSL. And you're gonna say, well, where am I getting that information?
If we look at a sectional chart, any sectional chart, we come over to the legend section. You're gonna find in the legend where it says that these little lines here will differentiate floors of class E airspace that's greater than 700 feet above the surface. And it has a note here, class E airspace exists at 1200 feet AGL unless otherwise designated as shown above with any of these markings here.
So classy airspace always exists 1200 feet AGL on up. Okay so that's just going to be a default we're going to go ahead and use. That being said, if we're standing out by this cell phone tower here, Class G airspace is going to go from the surface, which is our default, on up to 1,200 feet AGL. Then it's Class E airspace above that.
All right. Now, if we come over here. Here we have this magenta vignette.
This denotes Class E airspace that is not starting at 1,200 feet MSL, or AGL rather. So if we look over here at our little legend here, Class E airspace with a floor 700 feet above surface that laterally abuts Class G airspace. Great. So, or classy airspace with floor 700 feet above surface, that laterally butts 1,200 foot or higher classy airspace. Same exact thing.
They have it twice, but it really means the same thing here. So, when we look at Venice Airport. What we see is Class G airspace, like we said, out by the antenna from the surface on up to 1,200 feet.
As we come in here, the Class G airspace is still touching the surface. And even at Venice Airport, it's from the surface on up. But it's going to stop at 700. That's what this magenta is. vignette means.
So anytime you see this magenta vignette, just think of it stopping the Class G airspace at 700 feet, and then it's going to be Class C above that. Same thing down here. We have Class C airspace from 700 feet on up, Class G below it, touching the ground.
Everywhere out in here, Class G airspace from the surface up to 1,200 feet AGL. There's no other airspace denoting that it's different. Come to the middle of the state, it's Class G airspace all the way touching the ground.
But in this outline here, the Class E starts at 700. So the Class G airspace is only going from the surface up to 700 feet AGL within this area inside of here. Now, not to complicate the situation, if that's all you understand about Class G airspace, you're in really good shape. You'll be just fine.
But these blue dashed lines out here, for bonus points, if you want to know what they are, it's denoting Class G airspace with a floor. Other than 14,500 feet MSL. So, when we see this, differentiates floors of classy airspace greater than 700 feet above the surface, that's a complicated way of saying that it's really class G airspace is being allowed to come up. So, when we see these blue dashed lines here, what it's telling us is class G airspace, like we said, is from the surface to 1200, all out here. But as we come out here, Class G airspace goes from the surface up to 1,300 feet MSL.
And then, and that's all within here, so surface up to 1,300 feet MSL. And then out here, it's from the surface up to 2,700 feet MSL going on up. Now, what's the purpose behind that?
Silly rules. It's so far offshore, you're not going to be flying out there anyways. This line here is about 12 miles offshore, this little ADA's line. So you're not going to be going more than just a few miles offshore when you're flying the traffic. pattern.
So this really won't matter to you much. Where you're going to see things like this occur is way out west. So way out west here in the middle of nowhere, we do have class G or C. space that goes up to 9,000 feet MSL. Mind you, that's not a lot of Class G airspace because you have the surface is pretty high out there too.
The surface is actually 6,758 feet out there and even higher. So although there are a few areas where Class G airspace still goes higher than 1,200 feet AGL over the continental US, it's really few and far between. You got to go way far out west to find it where it's really not busy.
And the purpose of that is just to give people uncontrolled airspace where they can hop into and go do silly things. So you're not going to find it in the areas that you really fly in. As a default, all I really want you to remember is that Class G airspace goes from the ground on up to 1200 feet AGL, unless you have this magenta ring.
That's it. That's all there is to Class G airspace. Real simple, cut and dry. Just remember those things.
You'll be fine. So hopefully you guys found that helpful. Make sure you give us a thumbs up on our video, subscribe to our channel, keep up to our latest episodes as they come out.
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