Viewing entire victor airways in foreflight

NoHeat

NoHeat

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I've sometimes wanted to visualize a particular victor airway without the clutter of all the other airways that are shown on IFR and VFR charts. I just noticed that foreflight makes it easy.

Just type V6 for example as the route (nothing else, not a destination or anything, just V6), and in a flash you'll see the whole victor airway. I discovered V6 goes cross country from LGA to OAK. It would have been hard to trace it out manually using the charts, but foreflight made it easy.
 
I noticed that V1 looks a lot like US Highway 1, along the East Coast, and V2 looks a lot like US Highway 2 which runs coast-to-coast just south of the Canadian border.

V6, which also runs coast to coast, is fairly similar to US Highway 6, except that it ends at Oakland instead of taking a sharp turn south to Long Beach as the highway does.

I wonder if the old-time cartographers who planned the Victor airways were thinking of them as highways in the sky, and chose to number them like the motor routes as much as possible.
 
It appears that EVEN victors go EAST-WEST and ODD victors go NORTH-SOUTH. Just like the highway system.
 
Maybe, but I suspect it has more to do with old air mail routes. The first transcontinental route was .... New York to Oakland. And the west end -- Reno, Sacramento, Oakland -- is still V6. That's pretty far north of US6 throughout California and Nevada.
 
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Very cool!! Thanks for the tip!!

Someone needs to start a topic Foreflight Tips to put all this great stuff in.
 
That's pretty neat. I have no idea why I never tried that =)
 
MAKG1 said:
Maybe, but I suspect it has more to do with old air mail routes.
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It makes sense that old navaids would be replaced by new ones following the same route, so I believe you're right, that an old air mail route could live on today as a victor airway.

The question is about the numbering. If it was the first airmail route, they could have called it V1 when they put up VORs. But they didn't.
 
Kinda surprises me no one knew this. Then I realize I'm old and comfortably fly /A or /U all the time. You know, actually using the VOR receiver as primary nav. Sigh.
 
denverpilot said:
Kinda surprises me no one knew this. Then I realize I'm old and comfortably fly /A or /U all the time. You know, actually using the VOR receiver as primary nav. Sigh.
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What is this VOR thing you speak of..:dunno:....:confused:.......:D
 
NoHeat said:
I noticed that V1 looks a lot like US Highway 1, along the East Coast, and V2 looks a lot like US Highway 2 which runs coast-to-coast just south of the Canadian border.

V6, which also runs coast to coast, is fairly similar to US Highway 6, except that it ends at Oakland instead of taking a sharp turn south to Long Beach as the highway does.

I wonder if the old-time cartographers who planned the Victor airways were thinking of them as highways in the sky, and chose to number them like the motor routes as much as possible.
Click to expand...

There was an article in AOPA Pilot that said exactly that.
 
NoHeat said:
I've sometimes wanted to visualize a particular victor airway without the clutter of all the other airways that are shown on IFR and VFR charts. I just noticed that foreflight makes it easy.

Just type V6 for example as the route (nothing else, not a destination or anything, just V6), and in a flash you'll see the whole victor airway. I discovered V6 goes cross country from LGA to OAK. It would have been hard to trace it out manually using the charts, but foreflight made it easy.
Click to expand...

Great tip, thanks!
 
NoHeat said:
I noticed that V1 looks a lot like US Highway 1, along the East Coast, and V2 looks a lot like US Highway 2 which runs coast-to-coast just south of the Canadian border.
Click to expand...
An interesting little note about V2: it actually does cross southern Ontario, but FF doesn't show the Canadian portion correctly when you just search for V2, instead it draws a straight line (or is it a great circle?) between the nearest fixes to the US/Canada border. This is likely related to a bug that the FF team is aware of, that causes FF to appear to treat the portions of airways that cross Canadian airspace as separate entities from their US continuations.
 
Of course, you'll never get that routing even if your origin and destination are at the ends of the airway.
 
flyingron said:
Of course, you'll never get that routing even if your origin and destination are at the ends of the airway.
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Out here we can. Not back east or on the left coast, much.

It also helps if you have to legally say "unable" when they offer direct or any other non /A or /U routing. Heh.

"But I am vector-qualified and just a guess that a heading of 285 would get me to where you'd like me to be..."

;) ;) ;)


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