Flight plans, routes and tracks
Routes and tracks as GPX files
GPX is an open XML schema that allows to store in a file collections of: way points, routes and tracks. It is always more used by many GPS devices and applications, because this format is independent from any GPS device producer it is often used to exchange data between devices and softwares of different brands. For example: also with the popular Google Earth it is possible to open GPX files and see routes and tracks even in 3D view. More information about the GPX format can be found on its official website.
AirNavigator and the GPX format
AirNavigator uses only the GPX format both for the routes to load and for the generation of tracks.
Once started AirNavigator looks for routes inside the GPX files loaded by the user in the folder:
/AirNavigator/Routes/. So in order to allow AirNavigator to fly your routes you should copy your GPX
flight plans a in the directory: /AirNavigator/Routes/ of the memory of your TomTom navigator.
Preparing a GPX route
There are several ways to do that, if your flight planning software supports the GPX format then, you don't need to read further, just save your route as GPX file!
VfrFlight
VfrFlight is a free, cross platform tool for VFR flight planning. It can be used for real world flight planning and training in FSX, FSX SE, Prepar3D, X-Plane 10/11 and FlightGear.
- To know know more about VfrFlight check its documentation.
- To get VfrFlight check its download page.
GPX route converter for VfrFlight
Since VfrFlight (version 2.3.1) does not support the GPX format I made a small open source tool (GPXrouteConverter) to convert VfrFlight (.vfr) flight plans to GPX and viceversa.
FlightUtilities
Another free way to prepare your GPX route is to use the online tools of FlightUtilities.com you can add waypoints to your flight plan simply clicking on the map and then save it as GPX file. There is also a Windows version of the same program that allow you to prepare your route offline in a more traditional way, finding your waypoints on a real chart on paper and giving the coordinates to the software that will produce the GPX flight plan.
GpsBabel converter
If your favorite planning software does not support GPX you can still try with
gpsbabel.
It also available with nice and easy to use graphical interface for Windows.
Let's say that you planned a flight with OziExplorer so you have your route saved as:
FlightPlan.rte in the OziExplorer format. In this case using gpsbabel you can convert your
route to GPX with this command:
gpsbabel -i ozi -f FlightPlan.rte -o gpx -F FlightPlan.gpx
Or if you have the route in the Google Earth format as FlightPlan.kml:
gpsbabel -i kml -f FlightPlan.kml -o gpx -F FlightPlan.gpx
GPX tracks
If the button "Start Track Recorder" in the main menu is pressed, AirNavigator starts to record: position, altitude,
heading and ground speed in a GPX track file saved in the directory /AirNavigator/Tracks/.
Every track file is named with his date and UTC time of creation. You can download them from your device and analyze the
track of your flight using for example Google Earth. To prevent excessive size of track files AirNavigator doesn't
record every time a sentence is received, but this is done considering a maximum interval of time and a minimum distance
covered from the last tracked point. This means that, for example, if you stand for one hour in the same place without
moving AirNavigator will record this position only one time.
Airspace converter
If you are looking for a tool to convert airspace files between different formats and to display them in 3D with Google Earth take a look here: AirspaceConverter
