Well, well, well!
I knew I'd get rapped for this one! Thankyou Traffic,Bexil & Tcas for your moderated responses.
I know that you guys are having a tough time at the moment and that in general you do a sterling job as far as I'm concerned. Perthaps I should have worded my post a little differently; perhaps a more crawly-bumlick approach would have suited some of you a little more and stroked your egos somewhat. Still, as disdained as many of you are about my question and, perchance, the way it was posed, it gives you a measure of the disdain some of us feel at times. I freely admit, and indeed said so in the first post, that anger is borne of ignorance.
What prompted me to ask was that the other day I was given a five degree change of hdg and told to change freq only to be told by the next controller to go back on the same heading I was on twenty seconds earlier. This actually happens a lot on that particular route and I just thought I'd start a thread to ascertain the real reason as it happens to impinge on my my working life.
I shall take up your recommendation to visit LATCC and quite frankly I couldn't give a stuff if you know who I am; In fact I shall tell you that my name is Fred Bowen, a new and inexperienced captain at CFE. You see, most of you are very brave with insults behind your anonymity but I'm sure that most of you are down to earth guys and are not nearly as agressive as you make out.
It was a conversational question stated in what, for me, just illustrated that we (pilots) do not know everything and do not have the bigger picture like you. I knew there must be a logical explanation but I wanted to know exactly what it was because I thought it better to seek reasoning here rather than on the air! I'm sorry if I insinuated that you have nothing better to do; my comment about the breakfast was intended to be a jest but it goes to show that it is difficult (at least for me) to express ironic intention using the written word (unless you are Oscar Wilde).
Those that find it such a surprise that a professional pilot asks such stupid questions should stop to think that sometimes we like to have the obvious spelt out to us, despite what some of you may think, we don't all think we're god's gift to aviation.
But worry not, fellow aviation pro's, I shall just join the vast ranks of really ignorant twats who are afraid to ask silly questions in the future; look see, I feel more like a professional pilot already!
So, thanks anyway for that, those that chose read the post for what it was and give me the answer I was looking for.
Regards SS
[ 27 July 2001: Message edited by: Secret Squirrel ]
[ 27 July 2001: Message edited by: Secret Squirrel ]