PilotEdge Forums

So I'm relatively new to reading sectionals, but I am somewhat confused by SMO's VOR.

Normally when you see a VOR on a sectional it will have a blue radial wheel around it. However in the case of SMO's VOR there is no blue wheel. This caused me quite a bit of head scratching when figuring out the mini route as it said follow SMO 128 radial and I'm searching high and low for the wheel to find the SMO VOR. (I finally just found the blue box with the identifier.)

Did they print the sectional this way simply because the LAX VOR is right on top of it, so it was to avoid confusion when reading the LAX VOR?

I'm just curious as it doesn't seem consistent.

My second question about sectionals that's not really related is with the purple boxes stating to contact SOCAL APP within 20 miles. There are SO many of these purple boxes, how do you know which one connects to which air space?

Is there a document somewhere on the rules of reading a sectional? I'd love to get my hands on that.

Thanks!

Brett

Brett, that's a good one for the workshop tonight

yes, I suspect they're trying to avoid grossly overlapping compass roses (the blue wheel). If a VOR is named after an airport, it's typically going to be colocated with the airport. So, the Santa Monica VOR is likely to be at the Santa Monica airport.

The frequency lists on the TAC and Sectional charts (way over in the corner) has detailed frequency lists including the quadrant of the airspace for which they apply. Such as: http://skyvector.com/?ll=34.15967457660 ... 114&zoom=2

Here's a link for the downloadable digital Aeronautical Chart User's Guide:

http://aeronav.faa.gov/index.asp?xml=ae ... aero_guide

Click on the link in the middle of the page or just click this link to download the manual:

http://aeronav.faa.gov/content/aeronav/ ... 11thEd.pdf