VOR approach SMO

In article ,
"karl gruber" wrote:

No.

You can be 6.7 miles out at 680/DME.

Maybe I'm just thick, but that's not how I read the chart.

After DARTS, you can descend to 2600. After BEVEY, you can descend to
1120. What happens after that depends on whether you can identify CULVE or
not. If you can identify CULVE, once you reach it, you can descend to 680.
Without CULVE, you have to stay at 1120 until you have the runway in sight.

Look at the plan view. There's a 863 tower at what looks like about 1/2
mile right of the FAC. I'm sure that's the controlling terrain for the
1120 MDA between BEVEY and CULVE.

To identify CULVE, you need one of two things: either DME in the aircraft,
or the tower has to be open AND you have to be in radar contact. It
doesn't explicitly say so on the chart, but I assume the tower has a BRITE
scope in the cab with CULVE marked on it and will call it for you on tower
frequency.

CULVE is 1.6 nm from the threshold. If you cross it at 1120, you're 945
feet AGL (referenced to the runway surface). So, to hit the numbers, you
need to keep a 590 ft/nm descent gradient from CULVE to the runway.
Looking at it another way, at 90 kts and no wind, you need an 885 ft/min
descent rate. That's fast, but not outrageously so. It's about twice as
steep as an ILS. It's certainly the kind of approach you need to brief
ahead of time and know what you're going to need to do before you get there.