inigo88
Composite-lover
You deserve some ball busting for not reading the sectional better, but it sounds like you did the right thing under the circumstances, arrived safely, and had the correct instinct to pick up IFR. In my (extremely limited) experience, ATC would have been happy to help you, and you can add that to your future bag of tricks - and filing IFR doesn't need to be an "out" - you can do it any time.
I've made similar mistakes being task saturated in an airplane and not been able to multitask focusing on small details of the chart and fly at the same time, but you shouldn't let yourself hide behind that "any student pilot could have made this mistake" comment. Using pilotage (which predates magenta lines by 100 years) we can see that DBQ's north south runway is twice as long (aside from the intersecting runway you mentioned), the largish city (Dubuque) is 4 miles north (not a small town 2 miles east like Maquoketa), it lies in the southwest corner of the intersection of two major interstates, and the interstate passes through the east side of town (next to the Mississippi river - a giant and important geographic landmark), not the west (in the case of Maquoketa). You should always use as many geographic features as you can see outside to identify the airport (i.e. not just "where's the intersecting runway?" but "where's the other interstate and why is that town so small and in the wrong place?" - you can figure the latter out from further away). The number and orientation of the runways isn't the only thing you should be able to glean from glancing at the sectional (whether on paper or on Foreflight), and if it is... you're not getting enough bang for your $8.95.
And for the record, I think any student pilot could have made the same mistake.
I've made similar mistakes being task saturated in an airplane and not been able to multitask focusing on small details of the chart and fly at the same time, but you shouldn't let yourself hide behind that "any student pilot could have made this mistake" comment. Using pilotage (which predates magenta lines by 100 years) we can see that DBQ's north south runway is twice as long (aside from the intersecting runway you mentioned), the largish city (Dubuque) is 4 miles north (not a small town 2 miles east like Maquoketa), it lies in the southwest corner of the intersection of two major interstates, and the interstate passes through the east side of town (next to the Mississippi river - a giant and important geographic landmark), not the west (in the case of Maquoketa). You should always use as many geographic features as you can see outside to identify the airport (i.e. not just "where's the intersecting runway?" but "where's the other interstate and why is that town so small and in the wrong place?" - you can figure the latter out from further away). The number and orientation of the runways isn't the only thing you should be able to glean from glancing at the sectional (whether on paper or on Foreflight), and if it is... you're not getting enough bang for your $8.95.
