Misprinted VFR northern chart

[TheClaggy]

Around mid May, I bought a new (2013) VFR Chart 1:500000 of Northern England, the style was again different from previous years, but I took no notice and recently went flying with it, only to find something strange relating to depiction of built up areas - the black outline did not coincide with the yellow colour fill (the yellow fill was printed about a cm to the right). After landing I also found that spot heights and upper airspace labels to be repeated in a white ‘ghost’ form next to where their actual correctly printed position was, again by about a cm. Did I just buy a dodgy print, or is this part of some larger CAA conspiracy? :uhoh:


Thanks
TC

[stevelup]

You got a dodgy one... send it back.

[riverrock83]

agreed - my 2013 N. England / S. Scotland chart looks fine.

[Flying Tooth Driller]

We had a similar problem with poor alignment on the Southern half mill.
Not a cm. out, but enough to impair legibility. We had to change them.

"Fings ain't wot they used to be............"

[cockney steve]

If I remember correctly, they'll be Lithograph printed, which basically entails 4 "stencils" of the map, one for each colour of the printing-process.
each colour"stencil" has to be placed in exactly the same position on the paper. you are seeing the results of mis-registration where you get misaligned multiple images.
(sounds like p155-poor quality -control to me.....you just can't get the damned staff, nowadays :p

[znww5]

CS - you're absolutely right - how a printer can miss such appalling registration problems is beyond me. You normally have inking and registration markings outside the print field. These are a series of coloured circles and + signs which lets you check ink density and registration - I believe it is done automatically on some print machines these days. The markings are then cut off at the trimming stage.

I wonder who prints the charts these days? I must make a note not to use them!

[xrayalpha]

New charts are digitally printed.

Last year's Scotland ones were useless unless you wore sunshades!

Was told by NATS, who have taken over chart production, it was digital printing so there should be no CMYK registration issues (just like with your home printer!)

So it is poor contract management and quality control by customer and printer. Oh well!

[TheClaggy]

Just to follow up on this, I got the chart replaced where I bought it (Barton tower) with no questions asked. Ready to fly again now :ok: