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Does anyone have any WAC charts they would like to get rid of?

You win, what is a WAC chart?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpJeIpcre7A

It was a big piece of paper with squiggly lines on it used by our ancient ancestors to find out where they were going and where they had just been, before the Lord gave us ForeFlight, and it was good.

Almost true. LOL

World Aeronautical Chart - a condensed sectional that covered a much larger area. Phased out starting in 2015. Scale was 1:1,000,000 instead of the 1:500,000 used for sectionals.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/productcatalog/vfrcharts/world/

Apparently you can download old digital files at https://aeronav.faa.gov/content/aeronav/wac_files/. PDFs at: https://aeronav.faa.gov/content/aeronav/wac_files/PDFs/

I remember buying a WAC chart as a young private pilot because I was curious about these "other" charts for sale. I immediately found that they weren't so great for flying around in a 150 or 172 because the scale didn't allow for much detail. Later one of the Part 135 operators I flew for had them as their required VFR backup charts. (You couldn't cancel IFR, even on an approach, unless you had a current VFR chart onboard.) In a 310 or 402 using VOR navigation, the lack of detail wasn't such a big deal and you weren't running off the edge as quickly as you did with sectionals.

Flying in Belize in the 1990s and early 2000s, we had years old WAC charts that we treated with great care because VFR chart publication for Central America had been stopped as a part of the war on drugs. (They'd also dug trenches across the runways at a bunch of little-used airports, scary. The drug runners simply landed on the roads.) We made do with what we could get . . . old WAC charts, highway maps and going to the Civil Aviation office and making notes on changes that they had on their current chart displayed on the wall (and the warnings of live firing exercises carried on by the British Royal Army at Baldy Beacon in the Mountain Pine region). (Stayed well away from there.) Also stayed at least 500 feet high along the coast because the RAF Harriers would be flying the coast at 200 feet, going like stink.

The Harriers were/are impressive planes, at least to a teenager on a commercial flight landing in Belize City, headed for San Pedro of Madonna's Isla Bonita fame. It was in the 70's, when Guatemala was making noise about reclaiming Belize from the British. The Brits made sure to show off their Harriers hovering and turning around where all the passengers in the commercial flights would see them. Pretty cool. Not much came of Guatemala's wishes to get the land back.

Belize is a very nice country, even if everything happens on island time (though they are not an island). The second largest barrier reef in the world stretches along its coastline and provides for great snorkeling and diving. You feel like Indiana Jones visiting some of the partially excavated Mayan temples in the jungles. Last time I was there, I was just waiting for the giant stone ball to come rolling out one of the temples at Lamanai as the howler monkeys screamed overhead.

+1

Harriers. light attack, heavy airshow. LOL