So this is all v-e-r-y interesting to me. I have another example where it appears there may have been a massive airspace "closure" or restriction imposed by someone (an ArcGIS employee?) who has no authority to do that and who had no idea what they were doing.
For some context...I've flown around the Pacific Northwest in my little Cessna for decades. I'm very familiar (I think) with all the airspace restrictions in the neighborhood (things change occasionally, but not often). I see one depicted in B4UFLY/Aloft that I believe is wrong -- just like the Oregon Islands Marine Sancuary "wilderness" designation.
The following annotated screenshot from B4UFLY shows the northwest quadrant of Washington state (which happens to be my favorite place to fly my plane). The important bits to note:
The area highlighted in bright red is marked as "Restricted operations" in B4UFLY/Aloft (the app highlights it in a faint red, I've made it bright red to make it easy to see).
This airspace is NOT depicted on a sectional chart.
I know, from living and flying around here for decades, what this region actually depicts:
these are the waters that are used by the Navy's "Trident" nuclear-missile submarines, as they make their way between their base at Bangor, Washington (see the big blue arrow on the map), and the open ocean (and the world beyond the US territorial waters), at upper left on this map. The US Navy (really!) wants you to stay away from their ships in this area.
I've see these "boomers" occasionally, coming and going, running on the surface, for years. I keep a respectful distance (and altitude) when flying over (in my plane). They are hard to miss: they're big ships, ominous-looking (each one carries enough nuclear warheads to wipe out a large nation...) and when running on the surface, are escorted by multiple small surface support vessels. I can easily imagine that when I fly by, I'm being watched v-e-r-y carefully. I get it, they are very expensive, strategic military assets, and the people sailing and caring for them take their jobs very seriously (and I'm glad they do, because...nukes). Lots of good reasons for behaving as a responsible adult around them (not the least of which is that they are authorized to use deadly force if they feel it's necessary).
But all the airspace depicted in bright red on that chart is NOT marked as restricted on a sectional or TAC chart (there is a lot of OTHER special use airspace around there that IS on the charts, including some that is obsolete/nonsensical...eg Chinook-A and -B MOAs, which I believe have not been used in 30-40+ years, but that's a bigger/separate question).
This is a little tricky, and to be honest, I don't know what the right depiction should be in this case. The submarines do not go through there every day (and I'm quite sure they do not publish their sailing schedules in advance, for obvious reasons). There are no TFRs issued.
Local (airplane) pilots know about the Trident subs (one of the unusual artifacts of living near one of the largest concentrations of nuclear weapons in the world); everyone I know who flies (airplanes) around here understands you give them some room when you see one running on the surface, but there's no TFR or other restrictions, and nothing on the chart about them. I think it's assumed that local pilots have some "common sense" (or learned behavior that has been transmitted from instructors to student pilots). But, with a much lower "barrier to entry" for drone pilots (only a wave of a credit card needed to get airborne), that kind of knowledge/common-sense transfer does not happen, and I'm not sure what's appropriate.
But I'm pretty sure that this massive swath of airspace that's depicted in B4UFLY/Aloft is NOT restricted, Yet, if you click any spot in that sea of red, you'll get the warning that you need to call the Coast Guard to "coordinate" your flight with them and get an authorization (good luck with THAT!). I bet the Coasties have better things to do.
This looks wrong to me. No?
I can break this out and post a separate thread if appropriate, but I think it is another example of an incorrect classification of airspace that has been made by someone somewhere, and I don't want it it to "stick" (I wonder how many others there are...). Ideally, I'd like to see some kind of less intrusive warning depicted, letting new drone pilots follow a link to learn some basics (eg,
ghostrider: stay the hell away from armed warships, if you see any...). But as currently depicted, I read it as a massive airspace restriction that is not correct or appropriate (and may not even be intentional -- ie it's just a "bug" in some GIS system).
Am I wrong?
