Plans to support Flight1 GTN650/750 with non-PLN flight plans?

[akmatov]

Greeting, I'm very new to FSiming and have been really happy to track down some great resources to make my entry much less painful  Plan-G seems to be one, I like it and can see it as addictive.  Another resource is the modeling of the Garmin GT650/750 navigation gear Flight1, which has been a huge help.  However, sadly, the two are incompatible.  The Flight1 GTN doesn't use the .PLN file format.

Are there any plans to tweak Plan-G to support the Flight1 GTN?  If not, might you consider it?

[tim arnot]

According to the Flight1 product page, it does support FSX .pln files.

The GTN 750 and 650 fully support user created flight plans and the ability to save flight plans within the avionics unit for future use. Those who prefer using the FSX Flight Planner can use the source toggle feature on either of the units to use FS GPS flight plans within the 750/650.

http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=f1gtn

[akmatov]

I read that also, sadly it ain't so.  And that is according to their support forum.  I'm going to bring that up with them now.  Thx

[tim arnot]

If they document the format they do support, then I can support it...

[akmatov]

That would be great.  Would the documenting result from something they publish or would it be something you would ask for?

[akmatov]

Tim, this is the response I recieved when I inquired about them sharing their flight plan save format.

The format is proprietary to Garmin. The Flight1 units are faithfully driven by the actual Garmin trainer. You have a truly realistic representation of the actual GTN - you have to enter your flight plan manually, as in the real units. While you can save the plan you enter, there is no "import" facility in the real unit, and there is none in the Flight1. That is the price you pay for the realism you get

.

[tim arnot]

Okay. If they want to reduce the usefulness of their gauge I guess that's up to them.

[hjsmuc]

Quite some time that this post was active but I thought I give it a try. akmatov and myself seem do be the ones which don't like any restrictions :-)

The answer from Flight1 is wrong (read must be wrong). The GTN allows for flight plan import, in these days also wireless http://sarasotaavionics.com/whats-new-in-avionics/new-gtn-software-offers-additional-featuresAlso, why in the real world would I buy one of the most expensive GPS avionics which can't work with any flight plans I have drafted outside of my cockpit?

The problem is that I can't find any reliable information about the format, is it fpl or gpx, it should be one of the two. You can store up to 100 flight plans even in the GTN trainer so there is a file which holds those, I couldn't localize it yet. The only pilot I have in the family flies heavies so he is no source for that kind of information, unfortunately.

Of course, this is not Plan-G's problem but ours who thought that we had to buy the new unit knowing more or less its limitations. But I believe that some brains in the community which are smarter than me and may have access to the real units find a way to make import of plans possible or at least point the developer to the right direction.

Cheers,
Hans

[djxmdjxm]

Hello Tim,

firstly, thank you for building such an awesome tool!

Recently, Flight1 have added support for importing flight plans into their supercool GTN units. See below and attached. It would really cool if you could add export support for these Garmin-GFP-Files!

Thanks for considering!

Best regards

Christopher from Hamburg

Statement from the website (http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=f1gtn):
"Latest Features with v1.18!

Custom Flight Plan / Waypoint Loading - Users now have the ability to load a custom flight plan and the ablity to import custom waypoints using a very simple procedure (see included document for more info)"

Statement from the tutorial:
"3. Flight Plan File Guidelines
Garmin uses a text based flight plan format that is derived from the IMI/IEI
messages format specified in ARINC 702A-3. But that's just a side note.
Let's take a look at the syntax of a usual Garmin flight plan:
FPN/RI:F:AIRPORT:F:WAYPOINT:F:WAYPOINT.AIRWAY.WAYPOINT:F:AIRPORT
Every flight plan always starts with the "FPN/RI" identifier. The ":F:" spec-
ifies the different flight plan segments. A flight plan segment can be the
departure or arrival airport, a waypoint or a number of waypoints that are
connected via airways. The entry and exit waypoint of an airway are con-
nected to the airway via a dot ".".
The flight plan must be contained in the first line of the file. Anything after
the first line will be discarded and may result in importing failures. Flight
plans can only contain upper case letters, numbers, colons, parenthesis,
commas and periods. Spaces or any other special characters are not al-
lowed. When saved the flight plan name must have a ".gfp" extension."

[tim arnot]

I'll look into it. (I don't have that unit, so any initial support will be tentative and untested . . .)

[djxmdjxm]

Thanks so much. We can help you with testing.

[bill721]

Hi Tim,
I'm interested in this feature also if you can find the time.  I can help test also.

Bill Ditz