ATC service on frequency change
I'm interested in others' views of an incident that happened to me a month ago which is still niggling at the back of my mind.
I won't mention the ATC's concerned, but I'm flying IFR in IMC at FL55 in Class G airspace, in receipt of a Traffic Service. Everything going well, holding heading and level, been handed from one ATC unit to another without problem and come to the point of being handed to the next.
Told to change squawk, confirmed, and then told to 'Contact XXX on [frequency]'
After signing off, I change frequency and contact XXX, the response is 'Standby'.
My problem is that at FL55 I am approaching a boundary where the airspace becomes Class D (at 2000 feet plus). The Class D is controlled by XXX. I can't get around that without going massively out to sea.
I'm perfectly happy to descend to below 2000 ft (cloudbase is 3000 ft), become VFR and remain below the Class D (2000 feet plus). However, in descending I don't know what is beneath me in terms of other traffic (it is Class G so there could be non-radio, in contact with other units etc), and I'm not sure what the legality would have been of me descending given that at that point I was flying IFR outside controlled airspace and therefore subject to the quadrantial rules. I also don't know the local QNH to gauge my altitude at.
I'm equally happy continuing IFR on track at FL55 subject to getting the zone clearance.
What I can't do is do nothing.
I'd hoped that by being told to 'contact' as opposed to 'free call' the new ATC unit would have had my details, my intended destination and that I was flying under IFR. They would (I would hope) know the meteorological conditions and I was assuming therefore that they would be aware of the deadend situation that I was flying into.
All the time of 'standing by' I was aware of the brick wall of Class D approaching - I slowed the plane down to the lowest speed I was comfortable with whilst maintaining level.
I appreciate controller workload, so far as radio traffic was concerned all that it sounded like was one training Radar Vectored ILS (the controller may have been covering other frequencies as well though?)
After four minutes I stopped 'standing by' and made another radio call (without interrupting any obvious radio transmissions from anyone else). In the end I was given Basic Service only due to controller workload but told there was no known traffic to affect a descent. I was also given Zone Clearance if needed during the descent.
So, it all worked out OK but by not standing by I could tell there was some frustration on the part of the controller. I accept that, I hadn't followed instruction to 'standby'.
I'm interested in others' comments (nice or otherwise):-
- Should I have descended 'blind', thus ignoring quadrantial rules ?
- Was I right to ignore the 'standby' instruction (albeit after four minutes) ?
- Is it reasonable to expect a new ATC unit to see the problem that I was going to be faced with ?
- I don't think I had any service agreement whatsoever with the new ATC unit at the point of 'standby' - as we had not agreed anything at that point, but is that correct ?
- Anything else I could/should have done ?
Thanks in anticipation ...