In article . com,
"Robert M. Gary" wrote:

The other day I was doing a VFR practice approach into Tracy, CA when
the controller told me "reporting canceling IFR this freq, or on ground
via land line...". I told him "uh, ok canceling IFR, I didn't believe I
was IFR" (because I hadn't asked for or received an IFR clearance).
The controller told me that any aircraft on an approach clearance is
IFR for the purposes of the approach. I guess even controllers can be
students?

I had a similar experience Wednesday evening with the VOR/DME GPS A
practice approach into Tracy in good VMC. I explicitly asked for a
practice approach, negotiated with the controller for the missed, and
got switched to CTAF fairly early on. The approach went fairly normally,
then when I came back to him on the (new, improved) missed and asked for
flight following back to Hayward, he says "report cancelling IFR". I
thought maybe he'd confused us with someone else, so I repeated the
request, and got the same terse response. So I cancelled IFR, even
though it was a practice approach; there was no mode c code change or
any other change after cancelling IFR.

It wasn't a big deal or anything, but it hasn't happened to me before
with NorCal Approach, and I've done that and surrounding approaches many
times as practice approaches. I just thought maybe I'd said something
wrong earlier when I'd asked for the approach, especially since I'd
cancelled the original clearance (from Hayward) much earlier in the
flight when doing a bunch of practice approaches at Stockton with the
same controller...

Hamish