Aviation database for Garmin 2610/2620?

In a previous article, "John Bell" said:
As Paul Tomblin has mentioned, navaid.com will allow you to load aviation
waypoints. You cannot load an entire database. What you can do is load
aviation waypoints as user waypoints.

Paul's site is great. I don't know about the 2610 and 2620, but you can
then load the waypoints from Paul's site with several programs. Some of the
free ones are EasyGPS, www.easygps.com and G7toWin,
http://www.gpsinformation.org/ronh/.

While we're indulging in a little self-promotion here, I'd like to ask
people a question about my waypoint generator. A little while ago I got
frustrated with the fact that the FAA data I get is incredibly
inconsistent about the naming of fixes. It's hard to know what fix types
to ask for, because what I'm usually interested in are fixes on airways,
but the FAA only uses the fix type "AWY-INTXN" about 8 times in the whole
country. Most of the others are called something else, but those
something elses are also used for fixes I have no interest in myself. So
as an experiment, I put a thing in the CoPilot waypoint generator to pick
fixes based on what charts they appear on. So I pick ones that appear on
IFR Enroute Low Altitude charts only, and I'm not troubled by all those
fixes that are only of interest to people with GPSes, or which are part of
Jet Routes, or part of an approach but not in the en-route, etc.

I put that into CoPilot, and asked for feedback. And so far, not a single
person has told me whether they like it or not. So I don't know if I
should bother putting it in the other generators or not, or even if I
put it in INSTEAD of the other fix type picker.

Anybody have any opinions?

--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
The language that these files use is just like BASIC, only with all of
the good parts ripped out. Oh, and did I mention that it's case-sensitive?
I could eat a K&R and ****** a better language.

I have IFR and Enroute checked, but I also have checked the
fix types checked. I use about 30,000 records. It took quite a bit of
experiment to get the fixes that I needed and take about an hour to
get the data base loaded into the PDA. I just don't want to mess with
what is working, however, if I were a new user I would much prefer the
fix by chart type.


On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 11:03:04 +0000 (UTC),
(Paul Tomblin) wrote:

In a previous article, "John Bell" said:
As Paul Tomblin has mentioned, navaid.com will allow you to load aviation
waypoints. You cannot load an entire database. What you can do is load
aviation waypoints as user waypoints.

Paul's site is great. I don't know about the 2610 and 2620, but you can
then load the waypoints from Paul's site with several programs. Some of the
free ones are EasyGPS, www.easygps.com and G7toWin,
http://www.gpsinformation.org/ronh/.

While we're indulging in a little self-promotion here, I'd like to ask
people a question about my waypoint generator. A little while ago I got
frustrated with the fact that the FAA data I get is incredibly
inconsistent about the naming of fixes. It's hard to know what fix types
to ask for, because what I'm usually interested in are fixes on airways,
but the FAA only uses the fix type "AWY-INTXN" about 8 times in the whole
country. Most of the others are called something else, but those
something elses are also used for fixes I have no interest in myself. So
as an experiment, I put a thing in the CoPilot waypoint generator to pick
fixes based on what charts they appear on. So I pick ones that appear on
IFR Enroute Low Altitude charts only, and I'm not troubled by all those
fixes that are only of interest to people with GPSes, or which are part of
Jet Routes, or part of an approach but not in the en-route, etc.

I put that into CoPilot, and asked for feedback. And so far, not a single
person has told me whether they like it or not. So I don't know if I
should bother putting it in the other generators or not, or even if I
put it in INSTEAD of the other fix type picker.

Anybody have any opinions?

I tried just using the IFR/VFR chart symbols. The good news is
my database went from 30,000 records to 15,000. The bad news is that
every one of my routes now has missing waypoints. It seems that many
of the IFR intersections are missing (ie. SACRI which is the
intersection of EMI/272 and ENO/318).

On Wed, 08 Sep 2004 15:37:17 GMT, ArtP
wrote:


I have IFR and Enroute checked, but I also have checked the
fix types checked. I use about 30,000 records. It took quite a bit of
experiment to get the fixes that I needed and take about an hour to
get the data base loaded into the PDA. I just don't want to mess with
what is working, however, if I were a new user I would much prefer the
fix by chart type.


On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 11:03:04 +0000 (UTC),
(Paul Tomblin) wrote:

In a previous article, "John Bell" said:
As Paul Tomblin has mentioned, navaid.com will allow you to load aviation
waypoints. You cannot load an entire database. What you can do is load
aviation waypoints as user waypoints.

Paul's site is great. I don't know about the 2610 and 2620, but you can
then load the waypoints from Paul's site with several programs. Some of the
free ones are EasyGPS, www.easygps.com and G7toWin,
http://www.gpsinformation.org/ronh/.

While we're indulging in a little self-promotion here, I'd like to ask
people a question about my waypoint generator. A little while ago I got
frustrated with the fact that the FAA data I get is incredibly
inconsistent about the naming of fixes. It's hard to know what fix types
to ask for, because what I'm usually interested in are fixes on airways,
but the FAA only uses the fix type "AWY-INTXN" about 8 times in the whole
country. Most of the others are called something else, but those
something elses are also used for fixes I have no interest in myself. So
as an experiment, I put a thing in the CoPilot waypoint generator to pick
fixes based on what charts they appear on. So I pick ones that appear on
IFR Enroute Low Altitude charts only, and I'm not troubled by all those
fixes that are only of interest to people with GPSes, or which are part of
Jet Routes, or part of an approach but not in the en-route, etc.

I put that into CoPilot, and asked for feedback. And so far, not a single
person has told me whether they like it or not. So I don't know if I
should bother putting it in the other generators or not, or even if I
put it in INSTEAD of the other fix type picker.

Anybody have any opinions?

In a previous article, ArtP said:
I tried just using the IFR/VFR chart symbols. The good news is
my database went from 30,000 records to 15,000. The bad news is that
every one of my routes now has missing waypoints. It seems that many
of the IFR intersections are missing (ie. SACRI which is the
intersection of EMI/272 and ENO/318).

Both the FAA data and the DAFIF say that SACRI is only on the high
altitude en-route chart. Try selecting high altitude en-route.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
.... industry giant Microsoft Corporation... a company that has become
successful without resorting to software testing...
-- Unknown, rec.humor.funny

I didn't write down what fix types I was using before starting
my experimentation and as a result I couldn't find any combination
which would give me SACRI and still be below the 32k limit. (I found
SACRI in the AOPA flight planner, and both my Garmin and Lowrance
databases have it, but after checking I couldn't find it on the VFR or
IFR charts.)

Per your suggestion I dropped all of the fix types and went
to VFR/IFR/High-IFR, got all of my fixes back, and had enough room to
put private airports and NDBs back into the database (about 25,500
waypoints, almost 5000 less than I had before). I had dropped the
private airports and NDBs when I started flying IFR and had to add all
of those fixes.

To answer your original question, I think the chart method of
selecting fixes is much better than the type selection method. I now
have private airports which gives CoPilot a leg up over my expensive
GPSs which don't.



On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 20:31:04 +0000 (UTC),
(Paul Tomblin) wrote:

In a previous article, ArtP said:
I tried just using the IFR/VFR chart symbols. The good news is
my database went from 30,000 records to 15,000. The bad news is that
every one of my routes now has missing waypoints. It seems that many
of the IFR intersections are missing (ie. SACRI which is the
intersection of EMI/272 and ENO/318).

Both the FAA data and the DAFIF say that SACRI is only on the high
altitude en-route chart. Try selecting high altitude en-route.

In a previous article, ArtP said:
To answer your original question, I think the chart method of
selecting fixes is much better than the type selection method. I now
have private airports which gives CoPilot a leg up over my expensive
GPSs which don't.

Great to hear it.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
I use shell scripts at ork. Some cow-orkers refuse to touch them, their
excuse is usually "I don't understand perl". Their fear of perl is such
that all things unknown are also perl. -- Andrew Dalgleish