After the cold front passed last night, my instrument student and I took off
VFR from FCI, about 11 miles from Richmond Intl (just outside of Class C).
We had just departed 33, climbing though 1200MSL when I spotted traffic in
the distance to the west. On this particular evening, Potomac approach was
bringing in IFR arrivals to RIC down to 2000 right over FCI. The traffic
pattern at FCI is 1200. Upon spotting the traffic we leveled off at about
1400, and turned towards the north. Meanwhile, we just switched over from
CTAF to the Potomac Approach facility, were the controller was pointing us
out to the MD80, who only saw us on TCAS. After the traffic was no longer a
factor, we climbed to 2000, proceeded on course, and requested advisories
from Approach.

After the controller gave us a squawk code, he chewed us our for not calling
him sooner. "You should call us before you reach about 1200 ft because we
have arrivals from the west and you caused a MD80 to get a TCAS RA." I
suspect our initial climb out of the pattern was interpreted by TCAS as
being on a collision course.

I replied, "Roger, we had the traffic in sight and changed our course
accordingly."

The controller replied "fine, but I don't know you had him in sight. Call
us earlier next time."

me: "Roger."

Conditions were good VFR. I think the controller was annoyed that the MD80
had to change his course to avoid traffic. I don't think it's reasonable to
expect us to be contacting approach before we leave the pattern in VFR
conditions. I wasn't going to argue that over the frequency.

Points to Ponder-
-Always scan for traffic
-Follow the Right-of-way rules (my student initially wanted to turn to the
left, but the traffic was proceeding directly towards us)
-ATC knows how to control traffic, but they're not pilots (usually) so they
may not consider operations that don't involve them, i.e. non-towered
pattern operations.
-Airline crews need to practice see and avoid in VFR conditions even if
they're IFR, especially when proceeding over an airport traffic pattern at
1800 AGL.