Thanks for the reply! Another controller was telling me that occansionally some facilities have fixes or routings that the national airspace computers insert into the flightplan, and show up on the flight progress strip. I notice on fltplan.com that planned atc routes out of BHM have a waypoint/bearing/distance after the departure gate. What is the purpose of these? I know aircraft would just be assigned the BHM3 RV.. (VOR/fix/route) and then usually as filed. So then what is the W/B/D there for? Is this an automation function for the flight plan computers so that the strips propagate to the correct sectors? I find all of this to be very interesting stuff! It amazes me how the national airspace system works and more so the inter and intra facility automation and sharing of information. I have learned a ton of cool and neat info from ATC and think you guys have a cool job. Anyway that was my main question. Thanks for the response and I'm looking forward to hearing more about this stuff.