Work through fictional FAA-style panels built for precise symbol, airspace, airport, and terrain practice.
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Point A is highlighted
Original fictional training graphic · not for navigation
POINT A · CHART ANALYSIS
3 choicesThe sectional chart trainer gives you 20 annotated chart panels with lettered points marked on them, and 100 questions attached to those points. The questions ask what the Unmanned Aircraft General knowledge test asks about charts, and they are written against 14 CFR part 107, the ACS and the FAA handbooks rather than around whatever the graphic happens to show.
It is built for two people. The first is the candidate who can recite that a dashed magenta line means Class E to the surface, but who freezes when asked to find one on an unfamiliar chart. The second is the reader who has finished the sectional chart symbols guide and would now rather work panels than read about them.
The trainer teaches a four-step read that works on any panel. First, find the exact point the question names — not the airport beside it — and classify the boundary around it by color and line style. Second, read the figures printed with that boundary: boxed numbers are ceiling over floor in hundreds of feet MSL, so 100/40 is a shelf running from 4,000 to 10,000 feet MSL. Third, decide whether your own altitude, almost always 400 feet AGL or lower, puts you inside that airspace or underneath it. Fourth, decide what the regulation requires of you there.
Step four is where most candidates lose points. Identifying a Class E surface area is not the answer to the question. Needing prior authorization from ATC under 14 CFR 107.41 is the answer. The chart is evidence, not the conclusion.
Panels are presented as images with lettered points, and you read them on screen rather than from a printed booklet. That matters because the knowledge test embeds chart images directly in the question from 27 October 2026 instead of pointing you at a supplement figure. Zooming and squinting at fine magenta print on a monitor is a physical skill, and doing it for the first time under a clock is expensive.
Answer options are shuffled on every attempt, so you cannot learn a position instead of an answer. Question wording follows the Airman Certification Standards and the blueprint effective 29 September 2025, under which Airspace is 20 percent of the 60 scored questions. Chart reading also turns up inside Regulations questions, which are 48 percent, because an authorization question usually starts with a chart.
Nearly every airspace question on a panel reduces to one decision: given what is printed at this point, does the regulation let you launch here?
| What you see at the point | What it depicts | Authorization under 107.41 at 200 feet AGL |
|---|---|---|
Solid blue ring, boxed 100/40 | Class B shelf, 4,000 to 10,000 feet MSL | No — at 200 feet you are underneath it |
Solid blue ring, boxed 100/SFC | Class B reaching the ground | Yes |
Solid magenta ring, floor SFC | Class C from the surface | Yes |
| Dashed blue line | Class D from the surface | Yes |
| Dashed magenta line | Class E from the surface | Yes |
| Faded magenta band | Class E from 700 feet AGL, Class G beneath | No |
Blue hatched band, R- identifier | Restricted area | Not a 107.41 question — permission comes from the controlling agency |
Blue hatched band, P- identifier | Prohibited area | Not a 107.41 question — flight is not permitted |
Airspace class is only the first thing a panel can ask about. The same read applies to airport data blocks, special use airspace, terrain tinting and obstruction figures: locate the feature, read the number printed with it, convert that number into something that either permits or forbids your flight.
A panel shows point B inside a dashed magenta circle around a small airport with no control tower. You plan to fly at 200 feet AGL.
Run the procedure. The dashed magenta line is a Class E surface area, so controlled airspace begins at the ground rather than at 700 feet. At 200 feet AGL you are inside it. Section 107.41 requires prior authorization from ATC before operating in Class B, C or D airspace, or within the lateral boundaries of the surface area of Class E airspace designated for an airport. So the answer is that you need an authorization, even though nobody is sitting in a tower.
The trap is that candidates associate authorization with towers. The regulation is written around airspace class, not around who is talking on the radio.
Reading the ring and skipping the floor. A solid blue or magenta boundary does not mean you are in that airspace. Most Class B and Class C shelves start thousands of feet above you, and the boxed floor figure is the only thing that settles it.
Mixing MSL and AGL. Airspace floors are published in feet MSL, while your 400-foot ceiling under 14 CFR 107.51 is AGL. Convert before you compare.
Confusing the two magentas. A dashed magenta line is Class E at the surface and needs authorization. A faded magenta band is Class E from 700 feet AGL, leaving Class G beneath it and no authorization required. The line style is the entire difference.
Answering the airspace question. The exam usually wants what you must do, not what the chart says. Finish the sentence with the regulation.
Use this trainer to build the procedure, then check that it survives pressure. The mock exam draws to the real blueprint — twelve airspace questions, five of them chart-based, inside a timed 120-minute sitting. If your reading falls apart against a clock, that is worth finding out before test day rather than at the testing center.
Pair it with the METAR trainer for the other figure-reading skill on the test. If the panels keep exposing gaps in the theory rather than the technique, go back to airspace classes explained and work the panels again afterward.
Yes. Chart reading runs through the Airspace area of the Unmanned Aircraft General knowledge test, which is 20 percent of the blueprint effective 29 September 2025, and it appears inside Regulations questions about airspace authorization. Candidates are expected to identify airspace class, floors, obstructions and special use airspace from the chart itself.
Work panels you have not seen before, and answer with a fixed routine rather than from memory: find the exact point, classify the boundary by color and line style, read the boxed floor figure, then decide what the regulation requires at your planned altitude. The trainer on this page has 100 questions across 20 annotated panels for that drill.
No. The 20 panels are training graphics depicting invented airspace, and each one carries a "not for navigation" banner. They use authentic FAA chart symbology so the reading skill transfers, but they must never be used for flight planning. For real planning, use current FAA charts and the airspace data at faa.gov.
The FAA does not publish a fixed count of chart questions, so no honest answer exists. What is published is the blueprint effective 29 September 2025: 60 scored questions, with Airspace at 20 percent. The mock exam on this site draws five chart-based questions among its twelve airspace questions, mirroring that weighting rather than predicting your test.
Yes, because the chart is how you establish that you are in Class G. 14 CFR 107.41 requires ATC authorization inside Class B, C and D airspace and Class E surface areas, and the only way to know which one you are standing under is to read the boundary and its floor figure first.