Pilot Getaways Magazine - Los Angeles Basin Tour

An aerial tour of the Los Angeles basin is presented in the Long Beach article of our Fall 2000 issue. This tour is a great way to see the sights of Los Angeles, but it is in some of the busiest air traffic areas in the country and comes close to Class B airspace. You should be able to hold altitude within 200 feet and not mistake one freeway for another. Take an instructor along if you are not comfortable navigating in dense urban areas. Please read the sidebar on page 8 of the Fall issue for more details on flying the tour.

NOTE: These waypoints were current as of Fall 2000, when this article was published. Since then, a TFR has been established around Disneyland prohibiting flight within a radius of 3 nm, 3000 ft. AGL and below (about 3,200 ft. MSL). It is still possible to fly the route, but you need to climb to 3,500 ft. or higher over Disneyland and contact SoCal Approach for a Class C clearance on 121.3 MHz.

GPS waypoints make your navigation a little bit easier. You can download the route as a text file, or you can enter them manually from the table below.

(Note: Clicking on the above links will bring up the text document automatically. Windows users can right-mouse-click on the links and select "Save Target As" or"Save Link As" to download the file. Macintosh users can click and hold until another menu pops up, giving you the option to download.)

The Waypoints and Coordinates:
If you cannot upload coordinates into your GPS and need to do so manually, the waypoints are listed below:

ID	Name	LatD	LatM	N/S	LonD	LonM	E/W	RecomAlt
KLGB	Long Beach Airport	33	49.1	N	118	9.1	W	57
1AQMY	Abeam Queen Mary	33	46	N	118	12.3	W	2500
1PFMN	Point Fermin	33	42.3	N	118	17.5	W	2500
1PVNC	Point Vincente	33	44.6	N	118	24.7	W	2500
1SFRS	SFRA - Southern Boundary	33	54	N	118	21.95	W	4500
1SFRN	SFRA - Northern Boundary	33	58.2	N	118	25.3	W	4500
1AGMS	Abeam Getty Museum	34	5.7	N	118	28.5	W	2850
1AGOB	Abeam Hollywood Sign/Griffith Observatory	34	6.3	N	118	18	W	2250
1ADNT	Abeam Downtown	34	3	N	118	14	W	2250
1AI5	Abeam I-5	34	0.7	N	118	7	W	1750
15605	Abeam I-5/I-605 Interchange	33	57.7	N	118	5	W	1750
1AFUL	Abeam Fullerton	33	52	N	117	59.5	W	1750
1DISN	Disneyland	33	48.7	N	117	55.1	W	1750
1ASLI	Abeam Los Alamitos Airport	33	49	N	118	3	W	1000

Meanings of columns in the above table:

ID: Four or five-character waypoint ID. Note that all user waypoints start with "1"
so that they appear together on an alphabetical listing of waypoints.

Name: Name of the waypoint. Many waypoint names start with the word, "abeam," such
as "Abeam Hollywood Sign/Griffith Observatory." In this case, the coordinates shown are those
of the flight path and may be one or two miles from the actual landmark.

LatD: Whole degrees of latitude of the waypoint.

LatM: Minutes and tenths of minutes of latitude of the waypoint (e.g. "42.3").

N/S: Always "N" to signify north latitude (required by some GPS programs).

LonD: Whole degrees of longitude of the waypoint.

LonM: Minutes and tenths of minutes of longitude of the waypoint (e.g. "25.3").

E/W: Always "W" to signify west longitude (required by some GPS programs).

RecomAlt: Recommended altitude at the waypoint on the LA Basin Tour.