Ron Garret wrote:
A couple of related questions. You'll want to get your southern
California approach plates out to follow this.

It makes it easier on people if you could provide a URL to the plate(s) you
have in mind.

1. The preferred tower-enroute IFR routing from VNY to SNA ends at SLI,
but SLI is not an IAF for any approach into SNA. What should you do if
you lose comm before ATC starts to vector you for an approach?

Pick an approach that makes sense for the weather conditions, pick an IAF
for that approach that makes sense for your current location and navigation
equipment, fly direct to the IAF, fly the approach, land, taxi off the
runway, wait for the "follow-me" truck to show up and lead you to the ramp.

You've got some fair terrain in the immediate vicinity of the airport, so
paying attention to altitude is critical. Remember what the rule says, the
HIGHEST of the MEA, cleared, or expected altitude. If you had picked the
ILS-19R, it would be obvious; 4000 to MAAGG and SNAKE, then as shown in the
profile view.

It gets a little more interesting if the wind is blowing the other way and
you decide to use the GPS-1L. My initial thought was that since there's no
charted segment from SLI to MINOE, you would fly the MSA. The problem is,
the MSA is 6800 in all quadrants. I don't know why they didn't provide
more than one MSA segment; the MSA southwest of the airport could obviously
be a lot lower. By the book, you would fly 6800 from SLI to MINOE, descend
to 3000 in the hold, and proceed inbound from there. If you were already
at 6800 or higher at SLI, I might be inclined to stay there and do all
that, but I'm guessing you were probably already assigned something lower
en-route to SLI. In that case, I'd use a little common sense and stay at
my last assigned altitude out to MINOE. If you were already at, say, 3000
coming into SLI, I can't see the point in a climb back to 6800 for the trip
out over the water.

The second question begins with a background anecdote:

A few weeks ago I flew VNY-CMA. I filed /G, so I assumed (silly me)
that I'd get a GPS approach. The clearance was Canoga 8 departure, VNY,
direct. When ATC told me to fly direct COOGA I realized something was
amiss, as I suddenly had no clue where COOGA was.

So ask the guy. "Unfamiliar with COOGA, say reason for reroute". Better
to sound a little dumb now than to just plod on fat, dumb, and happy hoping
things will start to make sense later. He probably would have given you a
heading and distance to COOGA and told you to expect the VOR-whatever. You
could have then requested the GPS approach and assuming traffic permitted,
you would have then be re-cleared for that.

2. The Canoga 8 departure doesn't go to VNY. The lost comm procedure
says to intercept the LAX 323 radial, then "as assigned." But if I take
that literally, I'd be flying back to VNY along some more or less random
heading (depending on where I intercepted the LAX-323) but almost
certainly pointing in almost the exact wrong direction. Why isn't the
clearance "Canoga 8, COOGA, direct"? And what should I really do if I
lose comm after departure on this clearance?

It sounds like you should intercept the LAX-323, fly that northwest to
IPIHO, then eastbound direct VNY, then continue with your clearance. This
is a lot of button pushing to do by the book. By the time you got the box
set up to track the LAX-323 outbound, you'd probably be past IPIHO, not to
mention that it might blow away the rest of your carefully programmed
flight plan. What I would have done instead was go into moving map mode,
turn on displaying intersections, and flown it by eye.