Hi all
After going through the posts, I have come up with a small solution for the eternal *.fpl problem. The schema posted on some forums really helped a lot and thanks for that.
This is a excel sheet unlock the excel sheet with pw “123” or “12345”. With the sheet locked it does not work so well.
Feed in the waypoint and route data and click to generate a *.xml.
Open this generated *.xml file on a notepad
Use save as option to rename it with a extension .“fpl” (case sensitive), select file types as all files and encoding as UTF-8.
and there is your fpl file you so badly wanted.
I assume every one knows what is to be done after this.
I had created a route with user waypoints, airports and VORs and it worked perfeclty fine(cos that was my requirement"). This is primarily for gps500w, but I guess will work for other Garmins too. I would be glad to help if anyone is getting stuck. Before you start you may want to note the co-ordinates(in DD.DDDDDD format) of the Jeppsen waypoints and the airfield elevation in feet from the GPS and keep it with you. Leave the comments to null every where. country code is not to be entered for user waypoints. As a rule use CAPS and Numbers without spaces (or without any special charecters). Ok i have tried to make the excel sheet more self explanatory so if any one wants any help feel free to mail me.
JUST THE USUAL DISCLAIMER*************
Naturally I cant certify it for any kind of accuracy or inaccuracy….. But I can tell you that it worked for me
Before you write a flight plan to a memory card just be sure its spare able and has no data on it, Else you will end up formatting your Aviation database or terrain card just like me!!!!!!!!
The excel file is attached below, open with excel and enable macros.
The excel file is locked with a password of either 12345 or 123… If you know what you are doing feel free to unlock it and work on it.
Enjoy, Feed backs and solutions welcome….. Feel free to share it or re post it any where you wish.
I unchecked the obvious tickbox in the download menu
because I don’t want any “recommended downloads” 
That download link downloads an executable (.exe) – FPL%20GENERATION%20TOOL%20GPS500W.exe, size 314k bytes. It virus checks with Kaspersky but that doesn’t mean a lot. It can’t possibly be a self extracting archive containing a spreadsheet which is 1/10 of the size.
Earlier today, it was an Excel (.xl – something) file which was actually a zipfile containing loads of stuff including VB code. I know Orifice 2007 and later files are actually zipfiles (first two bytes are “PK”) but some of the code in the zip was a bit worrying.
I wonder what is going on here.
Dumbpilot – could you please post a link to just the raw Excel spreadsheet or whatever it was?
I have received the .xlsm file directly from Dumbpilot. I have put it here.
Office 2010 files are actually ZIP files and the contents of this one is
I have not been able to open it with Excel as I have only Office 2003 with the 2007 import filters.
I suggest proceeding with caution.
Is fpl file format creation from scratch really an issue? I wrote a while ago a gpx to fpl converter and it basically is a xml format. The difficult part is that the fpl format must contain the country code for each waypoint because the garmin ignores the coordinates on database waypoints and imports them based on name and country code only. This country code is usually missing in other file formats.
It is interesting as I have problems with RocketRoute produced .fpl’s imported into the G1000. I end up with locked waypoints. I wonder if there is a way I can check the output file to see what is causing the problem.
The difficult part is that the fpl format must contain the country code for each waypoint because the garmin ignores the coordinates on database waypoints and imports them based on name and country code only. This country code is usually missing in other file formats.
Does this have any relevance to the crossfill protocol?
As I posted previously, the US firm Voiceflight offers voice loading of waypoints, to Garmin GNS boxes (not GTN – Garmin blocked that). But for Europe they make you pay $25/month for Jeppesen data of some sort. It’s not clear why they need that. Obviously having a database of waypoints and airway names assists the voice recognition, but I said to them “surely you can just spell any waypoint which is not in your database?” The reply was a non-reply and I suspect there are other issues.
Voice input of flight plans would be a killer application!
Voice input of flight plans would be a killer application!
I disagree. I think any sort of voice recognition in a noisy aircraft would struggle.
Apparently it works very well, according to US customers.
Also one almost never loads a whole flight plan while flying. It is the initial load of some weird Eurocontrol route that this would help with.
That is also exactly what the XML load (via the flash cartridge) is used for.
Sorry for link I gave seems like it was a unreliable data hosting site. Any way if any one really needs it please mail me.
Things i discovered while making it:
Schema for airport which works
<waypoint> <identifier>AB</identifier> <type>AIRPORT</type> <country-code>VO</country-code> <lat>17.456553</lat> <lon>78.458</lon> <comment></comment> <elevation>1742</elevation> </waypoint>
Schema for user waypoint which works
<waypoint> <identifier>NJ</identifier> <type>USER WAYPOINT</type> <country-code></country-code> <lat>18.453567</lat> <lon>77.458345</lon> <comment></comment> </waypoint>
Schema for VOR that works:
<waypoint> <identifier>DFDG</identifier> <type>VOR</type> <country-code>VO</country-code> <lat>19.449447</lat> <lon>76.458</lon> <comment></comment> </waypoint>
The fpl file looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <flight-plan xmlns="http://www8.garmin.com/xmlschemas/FlightPlan/v1"> <created>2010-11-20T20:54:34Z</created> <waypoint-table> ; ; ;
</waypoint-table>
<route> <route-name>ALLTYPESTEST</route-name> <route-description>TEST</route-description> <flight-plan-index>19</flight-plan-index> <route-point> ; ; ;
</route-point> </route>
he Garmin flight plan migrator rejects the fpl if the generated xml has even a few alphabets extra. So when you check you know what to look for.
As a rule all caps without spaces or without any special character works mostly(for all way points)
Regards
Sriganesh
