Sometimes just knowing the preferred route isn’t enough. You need the secret code for putting that route into the system.
Filing for a Lat/Long
Every year I fly from my home base at Rock Hill, S.C., to Fond du Lac, Wisc., for the Oshkosh AirVenture fly-in. I normally take a route east of both Cincinnati and Chicago, which takes me over Lake Michigan. As I near the lake, I always get the following re-route: Cleared direct Pullman, then via the Pullman 333 radial to intercept V510, Falls, direct Fond du Lac.
Key Takeaways:
- Pilots often face challenges programming and filing complex ATC reroutes, particularly those involving VOR radial intercepts, into flight planning software and GPS systems.
- The author developed a manual process, which involved creating user waypoints in his GPS, extracting precise latitude/longitude coordinates, and learning specific flight plan filing formats (e.g., VORrrrddd or lat/long) for these custom waypoints.
- Despite the manual effort, the filed route was often similar to received ATC reroutes, highlighting the difficulty of communicating complex flight paths.
- Modern flight planning tools, such as ForeFlight, have significantly simplified this process by automatically coding user-defined waypoints as latitude-longitude in the flight plan.
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