"Maule Driver" wrote in message . rr.com...
In my limited experience on the east coast, as long as the destination Lat
and Long are included (the Duats based stuff adds it automatically) the
direct route is generally accepted if I'm flying from something other than a
Class B or C airport with established procedures they like to follow.

'Tis true that Duats adds the lat-long for you. It's only when
filing direct via FSS that the issue comes up when talking to
ATC. Since we typically only file the first leg of an outbound
flight via DUATS, that means the issue comes up a lot.

'Tis also a point that per AIM, one is actually supposed to begin
and end the direct portion of the flight over a ground based
navaid, and include at least one waypoint defining the route
for each ARTCC -- I presume due to the limitations of the ATC
computers.

It still boggles my mind that our "antique" discontinued Palm VIIx
that we bought used for ~$60 can easily accept a database containing
every waypoint in the US but ARTCC computers can't.

Cheers,
Sydney