Create Flight Plan using Airways

[por930]

Hi Alex, thought I would create a new topic as I am sure there will be many of us 'high flyers' who mostly use the airways and your comments are always spot on...

To kick off the topic back ground, I have cut and pasted your reply to my question about inserting airways into flight plans...

Hi Ged,

three ways to get this done:

• Ctr+Shift+N and  then enter the route description manually: LOWI MOGT1X MOGTI UP66 KPT UL608 TEDGO EGLL
• Select departure, destination, SID, STAR and whatever and then use calculate flight plan. This will probably not use exactly your preferred airways but you will get a valid shortest flight plan.
• Enter LOWI, MOGT1X, MOGTI and KPT to the flight plan. Doesn't matter how. Then select MOGTI and KPT in the flight plan table and use context menu "Calculate for selected legs". This will calculate a flight plan between these two waypoints and all intermediate waypoints to the table. This does not necessarily use UP66.

What you propose is not monster code and certainly doable. I thinking already about functionality for half manual flight planning.

OK Alex, Ctr+Shift+N= "Create a new flight plan from route description", button.  I have been using this button, but the shortcut is better. When I build a flight plan, it may take me several insertions before complete, and maybe over a few days, it is like I need a similar button called, "Edit an existing flight plan from route description". I have learnt that, if for example I build a flight plan route description using airways and the save it, there could be some errors that trip it up, and the the flight plan fails, or at least, bits of it do. Whereas I usually build the flight plan in small pieces, usually each waypoint/airway, I save it, see it works, and carry onto the next waypoint/airway. It is the present save function that always thinks it is a new save and not an edit save.

I Determine Departure airport;Runway;SID. I determine the Destination airport, for the purpose of this plan, determine the arrival runway and STAR. Save it, which gives me my base flight plan. I now want to "edit" this plan by inserting the route manually(usually derived from real world flight plans) So far, the method I seem to have used is after arriving at a Waypoint: insert Airway and end Waypoint, [read route description] I see no errors, then I usually save this portion before moving on..ummm I have to use the, Create Flight Plan button, which seems a very long process for an edit save function, because it takes me through several actions. Probably ok, if you need different flight plan versions.

Is there a way I can start with the usual Departure airport/ SID Destination airport/STAR. save it, eg, LOWIEGGL01. Then load this flight plan route, and edit it, with a save function as I keep adding waypoint/airways. It seems at present, the system see's me creating a new flight plan each save because there is only the [create flight plan button] to save. Maybe this is part of the "half manual flight planning"functionality you mention above.

Your second dot point works great, though, as you say, it probably uses different airways to what you had planned if following typical real world flight plans.  

Your third dot point I did not understand. I can see where if I click on say.....( I am using Littlenavmap as I type these notes) OK Got it, did not realise how to carry out the pull down over two way points...  Yes, that is a great feature. Maybe an "improvement" if this function found more than one probable airway route between two way points, it offered choices before applying the route. 

Ged

 

 

 

[albar965]

Hi Geoff,

10 hours ago, por930 said:

It is the present save function that always thinks it is a new save and not an edit save.

Uncheck "Options" -> "User Interface" -> "Avoid overwriting Flight plan with not matching departure and destination"
This will use "save" instead of "save as" if destination or departure changes, i.e. Ctrl+S does not pop up a file dialog.

I'm also thinking about adding pop ups to the flight plan description dialog or the manual planning. For example you enter or click a waypoint and a pop up with all attached airways shows up. Then you select an airway and a list of waypoints for selecting the end point shows up, etc. I think this would be great for manual planning but it is a bit of work.

10 hours ago, por930 said:

Maybe an "improvement" if this function found more than one probable airway route between two way points, it offered choices before applying the route. 

That is doable and makes sense. Will keep it in mind.

Alex