Flying the tutorial flight plan from Des Moines to O'Hare I was eventually vectored to an approach on Rwy 27L, or at least that's what the controller announced. Everything (almost) went well until the controller forgot me on downwind: At 40 nm out and having already crossed the localizer I finally had enough and requested a different approach (IAP approach to 27L), which I aborted and requested another vector approach. The controller then vectored me nicely for the ILS runway 22L.Why did the controller forget about me? I did keep the speed up on downwind at 245 knots indicated. This is common practice and shouldn't hurt.Another problem I encountered was prior to the forgotten vectors: During descent, I was given an expect crossing 40 nm from ORD VOR at 10000/250. I figured this was close enough to KITRA (or whatever the name is) intersection, which was 35 nm from ORD, so I put the restriction into the FMC (767PIC) for that waypoint. Approaching KITRA the controller then yells at me that I now need to make a left 360 until I'm down at 10000, although I was only about 500 feet too high anyway. During that 360 I got the approach vectors after which the controller forgot me -- rather than completing the left 360 to the vectors, the autopilot reversed the turn and turned right to the assigned heading. This S-turn offset me from the planned route by a few miles. Could this have confused the controller so he forgot about my further vectors?Also, come to think of it: It is possible that the wind changed while I was on that downwind leg. I was initially vectored for 27L, but later was given 22L.Otherwise: looks promising, but I definitely... need to... apply the... slow A... T... C... voices... fix. Otherwise it sounds... too much like... Dubya Bush. ;-)Last point: 767PIC weirdness, but maybe someone knows: The 767PIC autopilot repeatedly was inprecise in maintaining both assigned headings and altitudes. In headings it was frequently happily maintaing a 3 degrees error, and even worse in altitudes it descended and maintained 2120-2140 feet where I was cleared to a glideslope intercept altitude of 2200 feet. If this had been a checkride, the AP (and thus me) would've failed.Thanks for listening.-Florian

in two years of testing, we've never lost a plane on downwind.see if you can duplicate.be sure to dave a .dat file as you enter downwind. if you can duplicate it, send me the .dat, and the associated .wx and .flt files from the fs2002flightsmyflts directory. i'll give you specifics of what i need, if you can duplicate it

Could it be anything to do with the statement "I did keep the speed up on downwind at 245 knots indicated."? On downwind RC usually instructs you to "reduce speed not to exceed 230 knots". Perhaps the controller was patiently waiting for you to reduce speed, although I've never known the RC controllers to be that patient... :-lol Ian

nope, he's still going to turn you no matter how fast you are going