Good evening,

I called request vectors for landing and approach directed me back to the airfield's general vicinity and switched me to Tower frequency, and from there I was expecting/hoping the tower would give me turn left/right instructions right the way until onto final approach, but it didn't.  I'm not sure if that's reasonable or whether it doesn't work like that?  Thanks.

Mike  

It should work, it has worked for me before. For example I say: <Callsign> requests vectors for <ILS or Visual> approach to runway <RWY>

Yes that's the call I made, though I forgot the ILS/visual part - the log file shows P2A assumed visual.  I still expected to be guided around the circuit though until final approach, but what happened was after nearing the airport, Approach handed me over to Tower.  I had been vectored in perpendicular(ish) to the runway heading, then the P2A co-pilot checked in with the Tower, "descending to One Thousand  Seven Hundred feet".  The Tower did the read-back of that.  I continued my current heading for quite some time waiting for the next instruction from the tower but it never came.  After flying away from the airport (too far imo) , I decided to manually turn downwind and called that to the Tower.

I'm still getting used to P2A so I'm not yet sure what I can / can't do, so is the above the expected behaviour?  

The other thing is when Approach was vectoring me in, the P2A map window was showing a very odd diagram for the circuit, which I couldn't really understand (and I have a screenshot of it).  I have had to hand-edit the taxi-ways on this airport as the data was incomplete (by default it just has the runway only), so is it possible I messed that up?

 

 

Mike,

When you don't specify that you want vectors to the ILS for runway xxx or to the visual straight-in for runway xx, then ATC assumes you just need help finding the airport and you will be contacting tower and requesting a VFR entry to the pattern.  At about 10-12 miles out, Approach will had you off  to Tower and you need to make a call something like "Tower, <CallSign> is inbound for landing", at which time the tower would give you pattern/runway information and tell you to report downwind.

I suspect the strange looking diagram for the circuit was a VFR pattern with the entry included, so it may have had an overfly of the airport and a turn to get onto the 45 to downwind.

Dave