Help! IFR ATC problem!

[Guest C17SimGuy]

Has this happened to anyone else? I've flown two IFR flights recently (Boston to LaGuardia and Rotterdam to Schiphol) and in both cases, Approach vectors me to for an ILS landing, and when they hand me off to the airport tower, the tower tells me to "enter downwind" of a different runway, as if I'm flying VFR. This happened at KLGA while I was on 3 mile final for 22 ILS, and ATC said to "make right downwind for ruwnay 4." At Schiphol, I was on ILS for 1L when tower said "make left downwind for runway 19R." What was really odd there was that I was 3rd in line! Each of the AI planes landed ahead of me landed on 1L and the tower scolded them with the "Transavia blah blah, you were not cleared to land. . .Air France blah blah, you were not cleared to land." Is something wrong with my ATC? Has anyone else ever seen this? I'm not using any weather program that updates weather real-time or anything like that. Any help would be appreciated!-drew

[Guest KenG]

That is standard ops for FS2002. Did you use downloaded weather from FS2002's weather downloader? What most likely happened is that your original RW assignment by approach was based on the weather at your current position. However, once you got into the vacinity of the airport, FS2002 updated the weather and that resulted in winds that favored the other RW. That's why tower told you to make downwind for the opposite end RW.A point of clarification, just because you are on an IFR flightplan does not mean you will be given an instrument approach. Most of my IFR flying has been in VMC. I'm an instrument student pilot, BTW. Therefore, most of the time, I am told by approach to expect the visual for RW X. That may require me to enter the pattern and, if I weren't training on instrument approaches, would be preferable to being vectored all over creation for a straight-in to the same RW. During my training, I have the luxury not provided in FS2002 of being able to request controllers for an instrument approach. If the conditions are IMC, then you will be given either vectors to the final approach course, or vectors to an approach fix where you will begin the published instrument approach.How do you correct this in FS2002? You don't. You learn to live with it and wait for Radar Contact v3 which should be released fairly shortly. It will provide a much more robust ATC system for FS2002.

[Guest C17SimGuy]

Interesting. . .I've actually not flown to many IFR flights, and the initial few that I have flown worked as advertised. It seemed just recently that it stopped working. Hmmmm. I'll try it again with no weather anywhere and see what happens then. -drew

[Guest GabrielR]

well said.... crossing my fingers for Radar Contact 3!!!!

[Guest]

>Interesting. . .I've actually not flown to many IFR flights, >and the initial few that I have flown worked as advertised. >It seemed just recently that it stopped working. Hmmmm. >I'll try it again with no weather anywhere and see what >happens then. >>-drew If you think that was fun...Wait until you fly into a heavily AI-trafficked airport and they change your runway, but not the runway for the AI traffic.One of the problems I have with the MS ATC is that they don't tell aircraft who are queued up waiting for departure that they've changed runways. I've actually had something along the lines of this conversation:PHL Tower: Falcon N920KP, cleared to land, runway 27RMe: Cleared to land, 27R, Falcon 0KPPHL Tower: US Air 102, cleared for takeoff, runway 9LUS Air 102: Cleared for takeoff, 9L, US Air 102Me: (in my head)Excuse me?!?!?!?!??PHL Tower: Falcon 0KP, go aroundMe: (in my head)I'm way ahead of you (on the air)Go around, Falcon 0KPThe alternate ending to this story isMe: I have a "low fuel, full bladder" problem here... You go ahead and launch all the aircraft you want on 9L, I'm landing on 27L!