Silly controller

Sam Spade wrote:

Steven P. McNicoll wrote:

"Christopher C. Stacy" wrote in message
...

When he gave you the clearance for the approach, did he say
"Maintain VFR?" If not, you were really IFR.



No. You're really IFR when you hear "Cleared to..."

How about this:

Pilot: "SoCal Approach, Piper 1234B is 10 west of Paradise on top at
5,500. Request ILS approach to Chino 26 Right."

ATC: "34B squawk 2133...34B radar contact, fly present heading for the
Chino ILS 26 Right. Descend and maintain 4,000."

Did the controller issue an IFR clearance?

No, you started out VFR and you have to inform ATC if you can't maintain
VFR.

Sam Spade wrote:
Pilot: "SoCal Approach, Piper 1234B is 10 west of Paradise on top at
5,500. Request ILS approach to Chino 26 Right."

ATC: "34B squawk 2133...34B radar contact, fly present heading for the
Chino ILS 26 Right. Descend and maintain 4,000."

Did the controller issue an IFR clearance?

Nope. What you want to hear is "cleared to the Chino airport". Then
you're IFR.

On the other hand, "maintain 4,000" sure sounds pretty IFR-like. My best
guess is the controller probably meant to issue you a clearance limit of
the Chino airport but mis-spoke. On the other hand, he could still be
moving other traffic around, and won't be able to issue you your clearance
until he's got the blips separated sufficiently.

But, there's no need to guess, just ask the guy, "confirm 34B is IFR this
time?" He'll either confirm that you are indeed IFR, or he'll tell you
that you're not yet and why. It's great fun to nit-pick the FARs and AIM
and second-guess what a clearance must have meant on usenet, but in the
air, if you're ever unsure what the controller meant, don't play games; ask
for clarification.

"Sam Spade" wrote in message
news:FhrIg.196$c07.193@fed1read04...

How about this:

Pilot: "SoCal Approach, Piper 1234B is 10 west of Paradise on top at
5,500. Request ILS approach to Chino 26 Right."

ATC: "34B squawk 2133...34B radar contact, fly present heading for the
Chino ILS 26 Right. Descend and maintain 4,000."

Did the controller issue an IFR clearance?


No.

Christopher C. Stacy wrote:



When he gave you the clearance for the approach, did he say
"Maintain VFR?" If not, you were really IFR.


Who taught you that? IFR by osmosis, that sure would help to unclutter
the frequency sometimes.

In article ,
(Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:

Hamish Reid writes:
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.

When he gave you the clearance for the approach, did he say
"Maintain VFR?" If not, you were really IFR.

Hmmm. That's not how I learned it...

And that makes
sense, since he subsequently asked you to report when you were
cancelling your IFR clearance.

But as explained in my first posting, I'd already cancelled my original
clearance some 30 minutes earlier; I was now doing a sequence of
practice approaches first at Stockton then into Tracy (something I've
done many times in the past year or two).

The above exchange sounds to me
like he gave you a new pop-up IFR clearance -- what you requested:
direct Hayward.

But I didn't request direct Hayward -- I requested (and got) the
practice VOR/DME GPS A approach into Tracy, and I was on the published
missed for that approach when I asked for VFR flight following back to
Hayward...

The part where you asked for "practice" and "flight
following" seems inconsistent with what he was saying back to you.
Are you sure it was the same guy who you started the approach with?

Not certain, but it sure sounded like him.

In any case, what both Robert and I noticed was that NorCal appears to
have either changed the SOP for practice approaches 'round here, or a
particular controller or sector was doing things differently, or maybe
it was just a bad day :-).

Hamish