"Paul Hirose" wrote in message
...
Yesterday morning a Cessna 182 hit the 760 foot (AGL) tower of 50
kilowatt AM radio station KFI in La Mirada, Calif. The married couple
aboard the 182 were killed, and the tower came down. KFI was off the
air about an hour.

According to media reports, the plane took off from El Monte and was
landing at Fullerton Airport to pick up two people. An FAA official
said they were on base leg at the time of the crash.

If I have this figured right, the 182 was coming from the north (El
Monte is 13 nm away at 350 degrees true) and on right base for Runway
6. The radio tower is 1.5 nm from the threshold on my topo, bearing
290 true. I measure it 33 degrees off the extended centerline, offset
to the north.

Has anyone flown into Fullerton? How big a problem is the tower?
Channel 7's story on the 11 a.m. news today had an interview with a
pilot who said the tower is very hard to see from the air. On the
other hand, the other guy they put on the air pointed out the tower is
on the charts and has coexested with the airport since 1947.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/news/122...ane_crash.html

--

Paul Hirose
To reply by email delete INVALID from address.


Having never been to Fullerton, I fired up MS FS2004 to see the general
layout of the airport from "the air" and, despite the almost painful dearth
of detail in FS2004, I was stunned to see that the KFI tower is right where
the chart shows it should be (sans guy wires...) when I turned "downwind."

Guess it qualifies as a major landmark since that's the only kind that's in
FS2004.

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
Chandler, AZ