Uncle Fred,
Monday was extremely quiet - however there really is no excuse for lots of 5 degree heading changes. I'm afraid the incremental climbs, especially below FL130 are inevitable.
To add to StillDarkandHungry's post, the problems faced with your climb include (but are not exhaustive)
Traffic routeing via CPT area.
EGLL outbounds climbing initialy to 6000' - leave the sector in the climb to FL130.
EGGW traffic to call the sector FL70/80 (min stack) for further climb
EGHH/EGHI outbound traffic FL70 for further climb
EGHH/HI/LF (plus others), FL110 from the north to descend
EGHH/HI/LF (plus others) FL120 from the west to descend
EGLL/KK traffic from the west, FL140 to descend
EGKK traffic from the north FL150 to descend
EGKK traffic on a KENET departure to climb
EGTK joiners/leavers at CPT
Obviously, depending the actual mix and who calls first you may get lots of variant in you climb profile, and you will even get a lot of headings to vector you round traffic to give everyone the best climb/descent.
A lot of the traffic will be showing on radar but not yet talking to us, so often we stop at a safe level above/below, have a look, then 'go for it'.
Quite often traffic will come on parallel headigns (more the HH/HI/LF traffic from the north). In order to stream them for the airfield we will need to get level separation, so will drop the first one to say FL90, the second to FL100. That leaves intially FL80 (if no other traffic) for your CPT dep. Once past the first aircraft, you may get a climb to FL90 under the second. Once clear of that you will get a climb to the next safe level.
If it is busy, controllers will tend to get more procedural in their controllng, as this requires less radar monitoring of individual aircraft... hence why you may be subjected to more step climbs - it keeps you going, but is known to be safe without having to purely watch you ion radar when there are lot of other aircraft to monitor as well.
Also, the reason you often sit level at FL130 for 10 or 15 miles is the fact that the EGKK traffic inbound at FL150 from the north is unknown traffic to the next sector (134.75), therefore you cannot be transferred as they, by rights can climb you to FL150 on first contact (not a good idea if there is traffic in th eway, unfortunately, they have no details on that traffic!)
Bearcat
I personally don't often witness the 5 degree changes that you imply happen - I can imagine if it did happen it would be tedious. However as the controller with the whole picture, just maybe on the odd occasion they do
, especially compared to some aircrew who think they have the whole picture just because they have TCAS
.
Maybe a visit to Swanwick is in order for you? That way both parties can learn from each other
