iFly GPS Forum

Sorry if this has been asked before; I tried searching and didn't find anything, but I'm not confident I searched effectively.

I am confused about what constitutes a "standard" GPS waypoint. Specifically, is there a reference that I can use to learn which waypoints are supported by the iFly?

I have programmed flight plans into my Garmin GNS430 using GPS waypoints found via various online navigation sources. Example: ETIME is a waypoint that's recognized by skyvector.com and my GNS430. However, this waypoint is not recognized by the iFly.

That's not a big deal...I can work around it. I'm just curious to understand a little better who decides what the "official" GPS waypoints are, and then how subsets of the list are selected for implementation in products like the iFly. Ultimately, if there's a way to see what waypoints are supported by the iFly, I might replan some of my routes to use those waypoints instead of the ones Im currently using.

Thanks,

Jim

No problem, Walter--thanks for the reply.

ETIME was just an example (it's near Bacliff, TX, southeast of Houston). I use it as a waypoint to steer clear of the Class B when I'm approaching home base from the SW. For the iFly, I can just rubber-band my course over to approximately where ETIME is and it's no big deal.

My question was truly from ignorance. There are a variety of handheld GPS devices and online flight planning tools that allow the use of five-letter named waypoints, but I have found that waypoints that work well in some devices and/or planners won't be recognized by others. I haven't really detected a pattern, and was just trying to get smarter about where these things come from and perhaps how to predict which waypoints are likely to be supported by all devices/planners.

Example: Here's the ETIME page on opennav.com: http://www.opennav.com/waypoint/US/ETIME

Scroll down a bit to the "waypoints near ETIME", and the map is just peppered with them. They're not aligned in a grid or otherwise arranged uniformly...it almost appears haphazard. Who defines all these things? How do GPS manufacturers decide which ones to include in their device's database and which ones to ignore?

Just one of life's little mysteries to an end-user like me....

Thanks, Ralph, but there's more to it than that. If you take a look at the link I provided, the landscape is littered with 5-letter waypoints. They don't all belong to IFR approaches. In fact, I think *most* of them don't. I'm pretty sure you won't find ETIME on any approach plate.

Aviation is only one usage community for GPS. All GPS waypoints appear to have 5-letter names. The GPS fixes/waypoints used in aviaiton charts thus always have five letters, but they're (apparently) just a (small?) subset of the entire set of GPS fixes/waypoints.