Latitude and Longitude Questions

This article is going to walk you through a few different latitude and longitude questions from the FAA Part 107 Course.

Question 1: What airport is located approximately 47 (Degrees) 40 (Minutes) N latitude and 101 (Degrees) 26 (Minutes) W longitude?

1. Let's start by taking a look at the chart from the book. We can see the 48 degree and 101 degree marks on the chart.

   

2. Let's first work on the longitude. 101 degrees 26 minutes
   1. We start by moving 26 degrees west of the 101 degree line. You can count 26 tick marks or count by the larger tick marks (5 minutes), until we eventually get to 26.

3. Just based on finding the longitude, we could already answer the question. Let's go ahead and find the latitude! 47 degrees and 40 minutes
   1. There are 2 different ways to approach this, from the north, and from the south.
      1. If you start at 48 degrees, you must go down 20 degrees as each degree has 60 minutes, so we know to get to 47° and 40', if you start at 60, you would subtract 20. Another way to think about this is to pretend that 48 degrees is really 47 degrees and 60 minutes.
      2. In the second approach, we start from the bottom, at the 47° and 30 minutes line, and then we move up 10 minutes.

4. Now that we have found both of the coordinates, let's draw the lines to find the answer!
   1. We can see that the points are intersecting at Garrison airport, which is the correct answer.