ATC: Altitude change during cruise, but I didn't request

[Guest FattyBear]

Flying DFs awesome A36 from SNA to SNS on an IFR GPS direct flight, I was cruising fine at 10000 for 15 or so minutes, when ATC asked me to climb to 11,000. This bewildered me because they have never asked me to climb during the cruise phase. And then, at 10,800 they told me to descend back down to 10,000. This isn't necessarily a bad thing obvioulsy, but this has never happend to me before. Anyone else had a similar situation?

[Guest RonB49]

It sounds like you flew over a mountain. As I recall the magic number for FS9 is 3000' clearance. So if the mountain was over 7000', then ATC would climb you to 11,000'. As soon as you crossed over the mountain, they descended you to your original altitude. R-

[Calypso50 0]

This might be a little late to jump in here..but couldn't resist..Last night I was flying from Kenosha, WI to O'hare, yea, pretty boring, eh! I started getting really weird ATC directions.. (no mountains out there, just water) climb to so and so, descend, tuen left, turn right, turn left, please expidite your climb(aftet about 3 seconds).. And the really strange thing was I kept getting "Please contact...so and so.. but the wrong options would appear on the ATC screen.. So the please contact kept goiing on back and forth every few seconds--contact Chicago, contact, Kenosha, contact Chicago, etc... up down turn left turn right... :>)I wish ATC had an option for @#$%^&*(), :9 Fun..Bill

[Guest av84fun]

While there is clearly too much of that sort of thing, IFR flight ITRW, especially around Class Bravo airspace gets frustrating too...like vectors 180 degrees off course.The issue is vectors for traffic where the little guy always gets the short end of the stick.Around Chicago, I would be climbing out in a C210 at 1200 fpm and get asked to "expedite your climb." I felt like telling them that I forgot to fill up my JATO bottles with rocket fuel...but never had the nerve!(:Jim

[Calypso50 0]

hi jim,i understand, but in this case i think it must have been the FS ATC because the atc 'voice' would say contact 'x controller on X frequency' and the atc window( i hjave the atc window off accept to show options) would show 'y controller option', and the 'auto radio' frequency change would be to 'y controller'..went back and forth like that..i just played along for a while to see what would happen(even tried dialing in the 'x frequence' myself but still couldn't get that controller to show up in the ATC window...) finally chicago showed up with vectors... and everyting was fine. sort of like FS's turn left, turn right, turn left, turn right, syndrome.. :-) Bill

[michal 44]

>goiing on back and forth every few seconds--contact Chicago,>contact, Kenosha, contact Chicago, etc... The frequent frequency/controller switches in FS9 are totally unrealistic as it was explained here by a real ATC controller. What happens that in real life there is a thing called "point out" that would allow one controller to point out your flight to another controller without actually any frequency change occurring. This was not implemented in FS9 for obvious reasons.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

[AlaskanFlyboy 7]

I had that almost exactly a year ago in Portland on my 250nm solo cross-country, departed Portland-Hillsboro east bound to Pasco, got vectored west bound, then north bound, then westbound again where they promptly forgot about me with all the airline traffic (2 o'clock in the afternoon in the Portland/Vancouver area is not something I recommend). After flying west bound for about 6 minutes and now at my 7500 foot cruise altitude I called back, "Portland Departure, Cherokee 113ND, request turn back oncourse."Yeah, I've had heard a few cracks over radio before. They seem to be appriciated when it's going slow for them. When it's congested, oh... I've heard some verbal abuse.----------------------------------------------------------------John MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private ASEL 141.2 hrs, 314 landings, 46 inst. apprs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach