Change of heading in flight plan

One doesn't fly headings in a flight plan, one flies to waypoints.

Can you file a point from DIN... using for example DIN090035 which would give you a point 35 miles from DIN on a bearing of 090... would that work?

I need to change my heading at DIN, same speed. How do I enter this on the flight plan route box.I have been trying various ways on Euro FPL but when I check the plog nothing has changed. Thanks Rob

Can you give more details of what exactly you are trying to file, etc, Rob?

Is it a VFR or IFR flight plan?

I am sure you know you don't specify "headings" on a flight plan.

You need to post a lot more detail to enable somebody to help you.

Rob - this doesn't make any sense.

Do you have an IR?

In Europe, one uses route development tools. There are no semi circular rules in Eurocontrol IFR (which is in CAS and under ATC control).

There is no airport called DIN. Airports have 4-letter codes. Guessing that DIN = Dinard i.e. LFRD, a route from LFRN to LFRD is something like this

LABUL R14 DIN

But that is just 34nm!!!!

According to this, the only other DIN is in Vietnam.

Obviously you are not flying just to DIN, but to get a valid route for your flight, just use FPP (or some similar tool) to generate routings.

There are no semi circular rules in Eurocontrol IFR (which is in CAS and under ATC control).

I don't have an IR and didn't know this. But I assume ATC would ask you to climb and descend in order to maintain the semi-circular rule as you turned over waypoints? I assumed semi-circular rules applied if not just to make separation more controlled. And a follow up question if I may, if ATC give you instruction to change to a certain FL but, though it would place you in cloud (and possibly icing conditions), would you ask for a FL below or above that is compatible with the semi-circular rule, or does it really not apply at all in 'Eurocontrol IFR' ?

Let's remove the simplest thing first: without an IR, you cannot enter IMC outside of the UK, so if you are about to do so you aren't going to be telling ATC - except in the context of an emergency.

For an IFR flight plan - and I mean a "real" Eurocontrol IFR one, not one filed from Shoreham to Lydd at 3000ft which is going to get binned as "silly" the moment Eurocontrol distribute it to the UK - you just knock up a valid route, at some reasonable level chosen with regard to (a) routings and (b) expected cloud tops, and file that.

Sometimes, ATC will ask you to fly the semicircular levels. This tends to happen in Germany and nearby. Elsewhere they don't care; you are under radar control anyway. In the UK they don't seem to care at all.

The whole point of the semicircular (and the UK quadrantal) levels is to reduce the speed at which traffic appears head-on (or nearly so) when it is separated by only 1000ft (or 500ft in the UK case, VFR against IFR). Under radar control (always the case in European IFR in CAS) this becomes pointless, and everybody is separated by 1000ft vertically.

I normally file for FL140, sometimes more for stuff like the Alps where FL140 routings are mostly not where you want to go.

This tends to happen in Germany

Not really. In, I would say, 98% of all cases, german controllers don't care about the semi-circular rule either. In Germany (where practically all IFR is in controlled airspace) you just get what you file or what you request via radio, no matter if it complies with the rule . (In fact, controllers know that pilots are often constrained in their flight planning by RAD restrictions etc. and therefore, after takeoff, when calling the first radar controller, he will often ask "what is your requested final level today?"). Shows that, nowadays, IFR flight plans really have no operational meaning anymore (only serve as a general "flight notification" for ATC and for the NORDO scenario).

I find that the UK is relaxed about levels but in the mid to high 20s you won't get other than the correct odd/even levels once handed over to Maastricht or the French. There are exceptions but if I happen to be at 260 heading east, they will ask me to choose 250 or 270 before the FIR boundary.