Import FSX/P3D Flight Plans to GTN 650/750 Now Possible

[MarkSC 122]

In a little-noticed update, the Flight One GTN 650/750 now allows for importing of user waypoints and flight plans, but only in the custom GTN format. I mentioned to Steve Waite that exporting of flight plans to the GTN would be a neat feature for Ideal Flight (which is already a phenomenal program BTW).  Well, within a few days, he did it. If you are one who makes a lot of flights between smaller airports or bush strips that are not in the GTN database, this is a big time saver. No longer do you have to program waypoints by coordinates. You can now press a few buttons and import a complete flight plan, including waypoints or airports not in the GTN database if they are in the FSX/P3D database. If you prefer to make your own flight plan using PlanG or whatever, it's simple enough to import that into Ideal Flight and then allow Ideal Flight to build and export the plan to the GTN.

 

Here's how it works. There are three new export options within Ideal Flight: GTN user waypoints, GTN coordinates, and GTN airport coordinates. If you know that both the starting and ending airports are in the GTN database, you can just check the first two. However, I fly to a lot of smaller airports and so select all three (after you select the appropriate export options once, Ideal Flight remembers and will auto export with each new flight plan that is generated). What this does is allow Ideal Flight to create and export a custom GTN waypoint file with all of the flight plan waypoints (including, if selected, TOC, TOD, etc.). The intermediate waypoints use coordinates to ensure that they will work and thus not rely on whatever might or might not be in the GTN database. If you select the airport coordinates option as well like I do, then the starting and ending airports will also use coordinates to ensure that they are added to the GTN flight plan even if the airports are not in the GTN database. (See * below for more info on this option.)  Steve has cleverly ensured that Ideal Flight clears the custom waypoints after each flight, so there is no danger of having a TOC waypoint show in multiple locations for instance.

 

Anyway, once your flight is built in Ideal Flight, just click the button to fly. When you are in the airplane, there are two things you need to do that take about 10 seconds total. First, you go to the GTN waypoints menu and load the custom waypoints file that Ideal Flight created.  There is no folder navigation, as GTN only allows the file to be in one location, so this involves just clicking one button. Next, you go to the flight plan screen, then the catalog screen and select "import flight plan." Again, no navigating to Windows folders is necessary.  Once you've done that, the plan will be on the GTN ready for you to fly!  

 

Ideal Flight is already an amazing program with so much to offer the simmer, but this is just another cool feature and valuable time saver. Kudos to Steve for making this happen.

 

 

 

*More info on the airport coordinates option:  The only downside to using coordinates for the airports is that, if you click on the airport in the flight plan, it will not show you the airport info, procedures, etc. because the plan is using custom waypoints and not the GTN database.  Of course, that info wouldn't exist anyway for an airport not in the GTN default database. However, if one of the airports on the plan is in the GTN database, you CAN still click on the airport button in the GTN waypoint menu (rather than the flight plan menu) and access it that way like normal. If the airport is in the default GTN database, then all of the info is still there and you can even select procedures and so forth. Of course, Ideal Flight also includes a ton of airport info on its kneeboard, so you may well not need the GTN for airport info anyway.

[reecemj 146]

Thanks for showing how to do this Mark.I use IF on every flight.