Flying Thru Congested Areas

'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.


I just talked to local FSS (Green Bay), and they say that filing
direct...KISW (Wisconsin Rapids) to KHEF (Manassas, VA) is an acceptable
route. The end points have ground reference NAVAIDs. But, at least
Green Bay does not think I would require intermediate waypoints. I
wonder if the AIM guidance is out of date? Besides, how does one find
out where the limits of the ARTCC's are....look for the scraggly lines
in the Enroute IFR charts? What if your direct flight does not happen
to go through a NAVAID in an ARTCC?

-Sami