Latitude and Longitude format changes and makes FMS flight plan import impossible

Hi Simbrief/Navigraph team,
A couple of my aircrafts (i.e. Fenix A320 and ProSim B737 Max 8) FMS’s only accept latitude and longitude in short format (e.g. 50N160W needs to be inputted as 50N60). I used to be able to enter the short format in Simbrief during my flight route planning, and Simbrief kept the latitude and longitude format as-is (as entered) when generating the flight and exporting it to the plane’s FMS.

For example if I entered a coordinate as 50N160W in Simbrief, it kept it in that exact format when I ‘Generate Flight’, and if I entered the same exact coordinate as 50N60, it also kept that format and I was able to successfully import the flight plan to my aircrafts.

However, recently Simbrief changes the format to the ‘long’ format, even if I input it in the ‘short’ format which is required for successful loading to the aircraft. For example, if I enter 50N60 in the Route field, it accepts it, but when the route is generated, it changes the format to 50N160W which as you guessed by now, makes the whole loading to the aircraft impossible.

Your help is greatly apricated.
Regards,

Hi,

Not all shorthand lat/long waypoints are included in the base AIRAC data, so it was causing bugs in some add-ons when SimBrief was inventing shorthand names. Therefore, it now only uses shorthand naming if there is a corresponding waypoint in the AIRAC.

On your last flight for example, you tried to use the following 2 waypoints: 51N10 and 51N15.

51N10 doesn’t exist because there is already a named waypoint there (called OTPUS), so you could use that one instead. 51N15 doesn’t exist because, in general, shorthand waypoints are only spaced every 1 degree of latitude and 10 degrees of longitude (except over the North Atlantic, where there are more of them).

In the past I could have just updated the ProSim and Fenix export formats with special handling to always use shorthand naming, but nowadays these add-ons are downloading the main OFP data file, so I can’t revert this functionality without breaking other add-ons in the process.

My recommendation is to file a bug report with Fenix and ProSim, it should be relatively simple for them to update their importer to recognize the ICAO format for lat/longs. In the mean time, as long as you use shorthand lat/longs that exist in the AIRAC, SimBrief should keep them in the final route as well.

Best regards,

Thank you for your reply. It is very helpful. FYI, the lat/longs that I used in my last flight plan was from a real-world CYYZ-CYVR flight (ACA 129) this afternoon, obtained from FlightAware, so those are being used in real world flight in Canada.

I just have a couple of follow-up questions:

  1. How can I see if a shorthand lat/long exist in the AIRAC?
  2. Isn’t it possible for Simbrief to keep the lat/long format as entered by user? For aircrafts which require shorthand, the user can enter shorthand format and vice versa. This used to work perfectly, as I used long format for PMDG or Qualitywings aircrafts and shorthand for Felix and ProSim.

Thanks again for your help.

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