ARINC 424 Parser

Overview

Programming work has started on developing a parser for ARINC 424 Navigation System database files, it is developed as a parser because it will read the 424 data file to build a data structure; this structure can then be accessed using an object based API similar to others in the FPAssistant SDK.

The API is being developed for supporting .NET Standard 2.0, 2.1, .NET 5 and above which means that it will be easily added to your software development projects as a local DLL reference or as a NuGet package.

The parser will be designed to consume the ARINC 424 19 specification into an object model but if the ARINC 424-A becomes adopted then this new format will be supported as well.

The API is built directly into the SDK and is available to license as an optional module.

Getting Started

The parser can load an ARINC 424 using the .Open() method and passing the filename as a parameter. Here is an example of opening a ARINC 424 data file using C#:

ARINC 424 Load Example in C#

Arinc424Io arinc424Io = new Arinc424Io(); // Create instance of ARINC 424 parser

arinc424Io.Open(@".\Arinc424\SampleData\filename.dat"); // Open the ARINC 424 data file

Once the parser has been initialise and a navigation file opened, then you can use the API to access the ARINC 424 record data in .NET Lists<>, for example:

List airports = arinc424Io.Arinc424Data.Airports; // Return a list of all airport records

http://api.fpassistant.com/api/FpAssistantCore.Arinc424.Arinc424Data.html

ARINC 424 Records

The navigation data is read from the ARINC 424 data file and available in objects that match the records in the specification of ARINC 424. The following records are available:

  • Airport / Airport Runway / Airport SID STAR Approach / Airport MSA
  • Controlled Airspace
  • Enroute Airways
  • GridMora
  • Heliport / Heliport SID/STAR/Approach / Heliport MSA
  • NDB Navaids (Enroute & Terminal)
  • PathPoint
  • Restrictive Airspace
  • VHF Navaid
  • Waypoints (Enroute & Terminal) / Waypoint Heliport Terminal

Each ARINC 424 record has an object class in the API with the same name hence an Airport Record has a object called Airport in Airport.cs. Each object contains information about the ARINC 424 data, these include:

  • Section Code / Subsection Code
  • Fieldnames of the ARINC424 record
  • Structure of the record, position and length
  • Set of properties to access the ARINC 424 Fields

There are other member functions to enable searching for records, i.e. Waypoints by ID.