"Bob Gardner" wrote in message news:oAHab.386624$Oz4.170720@rwcrnsc54...
I did not intend that pilots file lat-longs exclusively

*puzzled* did I say or imply that you did?

just when they need
something far enough away from the departure airport that a radial-distance
might not be in the local host computer.

Perhaps I did not explain clearly enough what I don't understand
about your advice. (I assume you mean "VOR" or "radial distance
from VOR" above. I also assume that by "local host computer"
you mean the ARTCC host computer.)

I don't understand the necessity of filing a lat-long in
any circumstance.

People file and fly Victor airway or direct VOR routing where
many of the waypoints are not in the host computer of the
originating ATC facility. For that matter, people file to
airports which aren't in the originating ATC facilities
host computer all the time.

How could this work, if (as you imply) a routing which contains
waypoints not in the ATC host computer is a problem?

It seems to me that it's a problem only if the destination,
and the distant VOR from which the radial-distance is measured,
are the ONLY waypoints in the flightplan.

In that case, I suggest that the solution is not to tell people
"go ahead and file lat longs". The problem is to tell people
"file enough waypoints to define your route locally".

If I'm wrong, and the host computer will indeed barf on an
IFR routing which contains a VOR radial-distance to a VOR
not in the database, I wait to be corrected. But in that
case, I don't understand how filing an IFR routing which
includes direct-VOR-VOR segments that the local host doesn't
know about works, either.

IOW, I don't understand what problem requires lat-longs to
solve it. And yes, we've flown trips where the VOR radial-
distance we chose turned out to be just outside one center's
airspace and we were requested to give them a VOR or VOR
radial-distance w/in their airspace which defined our route,
so I understand the problem of ATC host computers which store
fewer waypoints than my obsolete Palm VIIx. I just don't see
how filing a lat-long would solve any problem.

Perhaps I'm just dense.

Cheers,
Sydney