Lesson B3 1:35 8 of 26
How to read the data block of an airport without a tower, with Marina Municipal as the example.
The video plays from YouTube. FAA San Francisco Sectional, effective 29 OCT 2026. Not for navigation.
Airports without a tower print their data in magenta. This is the block for Marina Municipal. The top line is the name and the identifier. Here, the second line is the weather. Marina has an AWOS on 134.025. Listen to it before you enter the pattern.
137 is the field elevation in feet MSL. The star before the L means the lights have limits. At Marina, click the CTAF seven times to turn them on. 35 means the longest runway is about 3,500 feet.
The UNICOM is 122.7. The C after it means it is also the CTAF. With no tower, you make your position calls on it. RP 29 means right traffic for runway 29. At Mesa Del Rey in King City, the L has no star. The runway lights are on from sunset to sunrise.
Frazier Lake has two lines of runway data. The first is the turf runway, about 2,500 feet long. The second is the water runway, about 3,000 feet long. RP 23 and 23W means runway 23 and water runway 23W use right traffic. Christensen Ranch is a private airport. The Pvt label means it is not open to the public.
A dash in the lighting spot means no runway lights. This block lists no frequency either. Before you fly to any public non-towered airport, read its page in the Chart Supplement.
Before you fly, check the current chart, the Chart Supplement and NOTAMs.
A discovery flight is actual flight training with a certified flight instructor at the Salinas Airport. Your hands on the controls, with the chart on your knee.
