True Courses: Starting from Sayre

Found poems from the March 26, 1998, edition of the Dallas Sectional Chart

Once, when I was practicing cross-country flights during my pilot's training, I flew from Salisbury, Maryland, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. If I was on course, I would fly right over Havre de Grace, Maryland. I had never been to Havre de Grace, but I knew from my aeronautical chart that the town bordered the Susquehanna River and had a highway bridge and a railway bridge, with another highway bridge a few miles north and a dam a few miles past that. If I had adjusted my course correctly to account for the wind, I would see those bridges on the right side of the airplane. And I did.

"Starting from Sayre" is a tribute to the dying art of navigation using aeronautical charts. Before GPS became affordable and ubiquitous, a pilot navigated by following a compass course for a specific length of time or until passing a particular landmark. Landmarks seen along the route helped her know if she was on course or drifting with the upper-level wind.

A century ago, before there were even old-school, radio-based navigation aids, pilots relied on local knowledge, road maps, and skill to go from point A to point B. Many got lost, and sometimes crashed, because they missed a landmark. In the 1930s, a group of women pilots, led by aviator Blanche Noyes, decided to paint the names of towns on barn roofs, with an arrow pointing in the direction of the town and a number showing how many miles away it was. They did an astonishing seventy-five thousand of these airmarkings, before security concerns during World War II required them to be painted out. After the war, radio aids became common, and now, of course, GPS tells us exactly where to go and how best to get there. Still, it is both comforting and satisfying to see a landmark show up exactly where it should.

Even though we rely on them less, charts hold a fascination for most pilots. They reflect the Earth as it has been altered by humans. Altitude flattens the landscape, making rolling terrain look level, but aeronautical charts show changes in altitude with color and elevation numbers. Charts also show the names of major terrain features, towns, and even (on Western charts) ranches.

It struck me that poetry might lie in those names, and that one could fly a poem by choosing a course that went from place name to place name. I chose an old chart I had from the Dallas area, because it showed more open space than an eastern chart would, and it had intriguing place names on it. I plotted five short poems, each designated by a colored course line. (A portion of the map is shown on the next spread.) To read each poem on the chart, you must follow its course line from the center point, Sayre Airport, in the direction and for the number of nautical miles specified for each leg of the course. Each turnpoint (change in direction) marks a word or phrase in the poem. Since it is much easier to do this on a full-sized chart rather than a reproduction, several of the courses are translated here.

Each poem's course is plotted as a round trip back to Sayre, but the word Sayre does not appear in any of the poems except for the title. Each course is plotted relative to true north, without accounting for magnetic variation or compass deviation.

Orange

250° 83.0 NM

007° 21.0 NM

337° 26.0 NM 105° 43.0 NM 104° 65.0 NM

Prairie dog townGoodnightExcludes gray lone wolf.

Brown

088° 50.5 NM, 319° 13.0 NM, 096° 101.0 NM

096° 101.0 NM 182° 84.0 NM 344°15.0 NM 353° 46.5 NM

031° 36.5 NM 116° 122.0 NM

Alfalfa, corn, stock-Yards for turkey storage,Cemetery trail.

Pink

135° 83.0 NM

180° 6.0 NM

322° 99.0 NM 127° 87.0 NM 46° 55.0 NM...