ATC - VFR vs. IFR flight

[mark_av]

This has happened to me a couple of times now, so I thought I'd see if anyone can give me an answer.
Last night I took off from Philly Intl for a VFR flight.  However, once the tower handed me off, the only ATC option I had was to file an IFR flight plan.  Conditions were fine for visual flight (few clouds at FL200, visibility +20 mi), but I did not have any options to contact ATC or contact another airport.  I finally just pulled up an old IFR plan (not moving my aircraft to the departure location), then cancelled IFR after the readback and everything was fine.
My question is: why would the Philly tower clear me for a VFR flight and then not let me contact anyone once I was up there unless I filed IFR?

[Georf]

I think its because microsoft dont test the game properly

[RollerBall]

Hi there

There are no options to initiate contact with ATC about anything. If you are flying VFR you will usually get the option to contact an area radar service for flight following. You usually also get a nearest airport list. If you cancel flight following you won't hear any more from ATC except you will still be left with the option to file an airborne flight plan. If you fly east from Philly you also won't get a nearest airport list.

I copied what you did and everything worked fine for me flying west from Philly. You would be nuts in real life to fly east out over the ocean VFR.

With the greatest respect to all, it's pretty petty to accuse M$ of not testing the prog properly. It shows rather a lack of understanding and knowledge of the extreme complexity of the tasks that the program is dealing with.

Sorry  ;)

[mark_av]

"There are no options to initiate contact with ATC about anything. "
Actually, the ATC menu "usually" offers three choices when flying VFR: 1. Contact approach to request flight following; 2. Open or file an IFR plan; 3. Nearest airport list.
When I took off from Philly (and I was flying west, not east), only the second of the above options was available to me.  That's the problem.

"With the greatest respect to all, it's pretty petty to accuse M$ of not testing the prog properly."
Although I do think that my problem might be a MSFS issue, I do have the greatest respect for the quality product they provide.  However, pointing out shortcomings in a product is not meant to be criticism.  That's how we (and they) learn.

[mark_av]

In thinking about this further, maybe those of you with real flight experience could tell me if I'm right on this:
What I was wanting to do as I left Philly was get VFR clearance through the airspace.  Maybe I cannot depart Philly w/o filing IFR.  I was able to fly into the airspace and get VFR clearance, but maybe the story is different on departure?
If that's the case, though, I still wonder why the tower would clear me to take off VFR.

[Jared]

Perhps something wasn't quite right...

I too hdve had it happen where I have no options at all... :-)

[codered]

Mark,

There are some airports in reality that are within very busy airspace, so you might have to file a special clearence to travel through VFR.  However, for the most part you could take off from an airport contained within Class B or C airspace and ask for a transition if the option is available.  Most likely the option you should have is contact ATC for flight following and/or IFR clearence, plus area airports if there are any others around.  If these options do not come up, then I don't know what to say other than perhaps a hic-up.  I have had the rare occasion of strange stuff happen, but it is hard to say why it happens.

Kev

[mark_av]

Thanks, Kev.  A hic-up is what I thought, but wanted to see if anyone else had any ideas.
As you can probably tell from my description, I'm trying to fly as realistically as I can through airspaces, but this task is made difficult when the sim doesn't play along.
Thanks for everyone's response.

[RollerBall]

Sighhhhh.....

We've been here so many times before. With greatest respect I don't think that given the many thousands of man hours of alpha and beta testing that went into FS2004 and the preceding sims that led up to it that one tiddly VFR flight is going to show up shortcomings of the product.

I'm no great defender of M$, their policies and their work but as a developer who has spent hundreds of hours testing this and FS2002 to and sometimes beyond their limits, I am constantly amazed and impressed by the functionality that the program's developers have built into relatively low cost software that runs on bog-standard desk top PCs.

To give you an example - this evening I've been trying to program ILS approach legs in XML for a new airport scenery. At this stage in common with many other designers I've come across on the high-power scenery design forums I've had to give up because of the complexity of the programming task.

Reason - M$ have built in every type of approach, transition and missed approach that apply in the real world and I just don't understand em.

So this means that if you know what you are doing, you can practice the genuine, complex real-life IFR terminal procedures that the real-world Jumbo-Jockeys use. And you can do so because M$ have programmed em all in.

And d'you know what? I bet they tested them too  ;)

[Eskimo]

I think that you were below controlled airspace at the time.  If you are, there is no need to contact anyone.

Try climbing higher and see if it helps.  ;)