For example, just northwest of my home base airport, KOSU, there is an
intersection named DIPNE. It is on the V12 airway between the DQN and APE
vor's, but it doesn't appear on the sectional. So I guess not all
intersections appear on sectionals?

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Mike W." wrote in message
...
OK I am just getting into the VFR GPS navigation thing. Here is my
question:
what is the origin of all of these intersections? I see some as airway
intersections on sectionals, but many seem random.

Depends on what intersections you're talking about.

However, many "intersections" on an airway are not actually places where
another airway crosses. They are, instead, the intersection of that
airway
and some reference from a navaid somewhere else. Usually for the purpose
of
defining a distance, a transition route to an instrument approach, that
sort
of thing.

Without knowing exactly what intersection you're referring to, it's hard
to
answer the question more specifically than that.

And why is it when I file an airway flight plan with AOPA flight
planner,
it
always throws a couple of these in the route?

I guess you'd have to ask the folks who wrote the routing algorithm for
the
AOPA flight planner. However, your guesses could be correct, or it could
be
related to some maximum distance from a point to the destination allowed
by
the routing algorithm. It's possible (I don't know, not having used the
AOPA flight planner) that there's an option that tells it to only use
VORs;
that would be an appropriate restriction on the routing algorithm for VFR
flight, and would eliminate those intersections from your route.

Pete