Is there a way to use FMS as a substitute for ATC when it comes to altitude control? If not, would you recommend taking control of altitude decisions yourself and ignore ATC? I have had several issues with ATC being so late having me descend that I have had several missed approaches, and in most cases I was nowhere near close to a reasonable landing condition. Thanks in advance for your feedback.
ATC is buggy to say the least when it comes to GA. I filed a plan early on in the C172 “classic” and headed out. ATC told me to climb and maintain FL180! I had to request lowering my cruise twice to get it to let me stay at only 10,000’. But then it came time for approach vectors, and it wanted me to once again head into the nosebleed section. I had to cancel IFR, then contact the tower for a VFR approach. Thankfully, the weather was nice. Now I just fly VFR with flight following, even if the weather isn’t all that great. I just use GPS to fly and dead reckoning to set up my initial decent. If I ever start using the glorified hair driers, then I’ll use IFR clearance…
I pretty much ignore ATC during approach and follow the charts instead.
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Make sure you set your cruise altitude correctly. It’s avaliable when you select profile from the map/flight planning page. That should help and is easily missed.
In the aircraft, take control by making request to ATC. If you feel you’ve reached your calculated TOD, but ATC haven’t issued a descent yet, simply request a level significantly below you current to start getting down.
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Thanks guys for your input. You’ve given me several really good solutions.
As well, from the ATC menu, select “request descent altitude” when you get to your top of descent point.
Sometimes ATC refuses to accept lower altitude especially closer to the approach.
After having messed around with such altitude change requests, I now also simply ignore ATC from the TOD and either turn it off or switch to VFR to get a landing clearance at least.
That’s true, the ATC is somewhat good in that respect. When that happens to me, I just request a slightly higher altitude than the one I earlier requested.