Seeking obsolete VFR Sectionals

Hi! I am trying to obtain some VFR sectionals for a project. I plan to lay out all the sectionals to create a large map of the United States. But rather than placing an order for these maps I would rather use sectionals that are expired because:
1) it would have already fulfilled their purpose of guiding pilots safely
2) it would be reusing something that would otherwise be obsolete
3) it seems more meaningful to be coming from fellow pilots from around the country rather than direct from a store.

I had collected a bunch from flight planning to Oshkosh twice and I have already polled my pilot friends to get their contributions but because I fly out in Florida I have limited connections to the northwest and other far areas from Southern Florida. Below is a list of the sectionals I am looking for. If you have an old one lying around and you want to be a part of this please email me at chicowin [at] gmail [dot] com and I will send you a mailing address. Oh, and I need this by 11/12 so please hurry!

2 Great Falls
2 Billings
1 Klamath Falls
1 Salt Lake City
2 Cheyenne
1 Twin Cities
2 Lake Huron
2 Montreal
2 Halifax
1 New York
1 San Francisco
1 Las Vegas
1 Los Angeles
1 Phoenix
1 Albuquerque
2 El Paso
2 San Antonio
2 Brownsville

Thanks,
Winston

Contact your local USAF, NAVY, or Army airport base operations. Their phone number is in the IFR suppliment. They will have sectionals from all around the country. They just recycle them through a local paper recycling dumpster. You want to speak to the person in charge of publications and let them know what you are looking for so they can save them for you. You should be able to pick up the expired ones there. Good luck.

Sounds like a cool project, but will the sectionals line up correctly? Sectionals use Lambert conformal conic projections, and I think each sectional uses a different set of reference parallels. Might be close enough though - I've never seen someone compile a complete map of the US with sectionals. If you want it pretty well perfect, you can download geo-referenced digital versions for free ( http://aeronav.faa.gov/index.asp?xml...chartlist_sect ) and stitch them together easily in a GeoTiff viewer to a common projection, then have them printed somewhere at the scale you want. It requires more money then your project, and removes the meaning behind the individual charts that once helped some aviator. Depends on your goals.

-Tony

We had the whole US done in expired sectionals on the wall at my last job. They line up well enough, but you have to leave a lot of room for the curve - the Midwest will be a lot lower on the wall than you might think.


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Yeap, I started to notice the misalignment when I started arranging the charts I had already collected. Thanks for the advice! And I finally got a couple responses tonight so I think I should update this... I had given in to the pressure of the tight deadline and I placed an order for the sectionals I am missing this morning. I should have posted it to the forum a month ago when this idea came to me. :(

Alright I finally have time to upload the results... It took 8 hours of kneeling to tape the sectionals together but after it was hoisted up it created a nice backdrop for a party. It was 36 x 20. There was talk of using chicken wire to give it the curvature for next year but we'll see if that actually happens.
Attachment 1253Attachment 1254

It might be neat to add some expired Canadian charts on top...

Excellent! And the chicken-wire / curvature idea sounds fantastic... keep us posted on that one! :)

Better yet, lay them out all nice and neat on the hangar floor, glue them down and then go over them with some epoxy or another sealant. How's THAT for decorative recycling? ;)