Oh the shame! :-)

One of Don's problems with L/L's is that by themselves they don't tell the controller diddly about which direction you will be headed. They are just a jumble of numbers on a flight progress strip to a busy ATCS. Secondly, because they don't tell the controller diddly about which direction you will be headed, the controller has no way of verifying that they are correctly filed by you, DUATS or FSS until after you get radar identified. One digit of mistake on the filer's part can cause mountians of headaches for ATC with both IFR separation requirements and just plain old inter-ATC coordination fumbles. And speaking of radar identified, what happens if you *don't* get radar identified...?

File Lat/ longs at your pleasure, but don't be surprised at the results. Down here in ATC-land, we'll probably be surprised for you...

Chip, ZTL
"Bob Gardner" wrote in message et...
I know Don Brown. He is a good 'ol country boy, and an entertaining writer, but he is not a pilot. His aviation world is circumscribed by the AIM and Air Traffic Control Handbook, with no latitude (no pun intended) allowed. His Avweb column about filing IFR is almost perfect, but there are airplane-owning controllers around the country who will tell you that host computers throughout the system recognize lat-longs, while a radial-distance from a VORTAC several hundred miles away might get bounced because the VORTAC is not in the host computer. Keep filing lat-longs where appropriate even if you never get up to FL390.

Bob Gardner