PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Flying on edge of Stanstead Zone.. Flight Plan/Nav
Old 19th Feb 2015, 12:35
  #56 (permalink)  
FullWings
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Tring, UK
Posts: 1,847
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Quite honestly worrying about "printing tolerances" on the map is a just a bit too pedantic IMHO and really isn't an issue
I remember a new 1/2mil from some years ago. One particular piece of airspace airspace hadn’t changed but the depicted edge had, by a couple of miles. On another one, the print process on my copy hadn’t registered correctly and some of the layers were off by a similar amount.
As for the ANO [AIP] being definitive, yes of course it is, but try taking it with you and navigating with it.
Well, that’s what a digital moving map does.
By the same token, do you know the tolerances for the lines on a consol screen which is used for tracking you relative to the map?
No, but I know the proximity information will be generated mathematically from the airspace data.

All I’m trying to point out is that there are tolerances for everything. If you are using a GPS system with a current database, you can get much closer (should you so wish) to CAS boundaries with reasonable certainty that you will remain clear. Using a printed map and visual navigation introduces much more in the way of possible errors, therefore sensible pilots might elect to fly further away from where they *think* the boundary might be. That’s all.

If ATC decide to file a report on you with a radar plot and the only evidence you have to the contrary is a 1/2mil with a greasy line on it that comes very close to the boundary, it’s going to be difficult mounting much of a defence. I totally agree that a lot of the time, such infringements are dealt with by the way of an apology but why expose yourself to it in the first place? Is it what most pilots would call good airmanship?
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