In article ,
Roy Smith wrote:

"Robert M. Gary" wrote:
The other day I shot the VOR approach into SMO for the first time in
low actual. I've often looked at that approach as one of the most
difficult I've seen published

Why do you think this is difficult? The only thing I see that's tricky
about it is that you need to keep up a steep descent (360 ft/nm from DARTS
to the threshold, and about 500 ft/nm from CULVE to the threshold, by my
calculations), but that's just a matter of energy management.

Indeed. The only time I've done that approach for real (in marginal VMC
through a thin layer of stratus) SoCal vectored me well inside DARTS at
6,000' in a 172, which is SOP, apparently. Energy management's
definitely the key in a situation like that -- there's a reason I've
heard it called the "Santa Monica Slam" -- but dropping like a rock like
that would surely take a bit of faith in hard IMC....

The other point is that you're on an approach with a lot of faster
aircraft behind you, and I'm sure the temptation is to keep going like a
bat out of hell right up until the MDA, at which point you don't have a
lot of time and space to slow down. That hasn't happened to me, but I
can understand why it might. I was asked for best forward speed all the
way from somewhere out near OHIGH to CULVE. But it was VFR below the
stratus, and I knew my way around...

Hamish