I have just discovered a (perhaps well known) fact.. that the GTN when importing flightplans does not match up user waypoints with airports in its database, and leaves them as user waypoints in the flight plan.

That is OK, I guess.. but the GNS when importing flightplans manages to match these up and replaces user waypoints with known airports automatically.. very nice!

Question:  Is there a way of getting the GTN to do the same thing?

Hi,

I'm not sure about this. @fppilot has a much deeper experience with this and he might have a clue?

Sorry, I have had no experience with user waypoints in GTN since perhaps 5 years or more ago.  Back before the Garmin trainer and related database adopted RNAV/LNAV approaches and the fixes associated with them.  Prior to that I defined those approach fixes for perhaps two airports I frequented.  And I believe during that "era" the flight plan import feature may have not yet been in place.  With the current state of the Garmin trainer, and the associated database, I have found no need for user defined wayponts.

Edited April 11, 20206 yr by fppilot

Bert. I have thought about this a bit more.  I looked at my notes and when I created some user waypoints it was to position them to correspond to waypoints on RNAV/LNAV approaches. I believe that was all with GNS gauges, and may even have been with GNS v1.  What I recall was that they had to defined as distance and radial from a separate fix that existed in the nav database in use. I recall that what I defined and saved were IAF's on their defined radials from specific airports.  Those were not saved into the nav database, but instead saved into the "sys_nandx" file for the respective gauge.  I could such user waypoints in flight plans, but I do not believe flight plan imports existed at that time.

I looked at the GTN capabilities and see it has the same abilities.  I assume GTN user defined waypoints are stored in the same way in the nonvol folder.  So I assume, and my experience drives that assumption, that the GTN flight plan import routine does literal screening against the GTN's nav database only.  That's likely why user waypoints can be used, but cannot be matched during the import process.  

Are you saying the GNS import routine does match to both its nav database and the sys_nandx  file? 

I have not created or included user defined waypoints since the RNAV/LNAV became supported in the respective databases.

 

Hi Frank, I am not sure what the underlying reason is, but it may have something to do with the fact that the GTN imports gfp files and the GNS imports fpl files.

The fpl files have more waypoint information, including an identifier..

I mainly use User Waypoints in flight plans, because the flight plan, generated in Little Navmap, includes airports that are not in the GTN database.  To that end, Little Navmap has an option to export all waypoints, except for the Start and Destination airports, as user waypoints.   When imported into the GTN, the flight plan works, but those waypoints that are actually in the database are simply overlaid over the airports which they represent..

The GNS530, on the other hand, is able to resolve these "duplicates" and list the actual airports in the flight plan, which is nice..

Bert,
Perhaps download and look through the pdf file linked for download at the following web address.  Find the icon at the end of the first message in the topic.  At the end of that Garmin pdf is the definition and use of user waypoints for the GTN.  See if that sheds any light on your efforts.

https://forums.jetcareers.com/threads/garmin-gtn650-user-flight-plan-import-question.231557/#post-2538904

Most interesting...

Quote:

"User defined waypoints are specified without a name. The GTN will match the user waypoints in the imported flight plan with those in the user waypoint database, or assign a generic name to the waypoint if no existing waypoint is found at that location."

I'll do some more testing..

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

When imported into the GTN, the flight plan works, but those waypoints that are actually in the database are simply overlaid over the airports which they represent..

The GNS530, on the other hand, is able to resolve these "duplicates" and list the actual airports in the flight plan, which is nice..

Hi,

This seems the most probable reason. 

 

PS: the RXP GTN installer saves the flight plan and user waypoints specs to you drive in:

"C:\ProgramData\Reality XP\Common\GtnTrainer\flightplans.zip"

This saves you from having to find and download it.