In article ,
"Joe Johnson" wrote:

Yes indeed, Roy, it's HPN. I'm aware of and agree with everything you said.
I'm upset with myself for not following my first impulse, which was to
continue outbound until the other pilot and I had visual contact. This was
Sunday night, and I was unfamiliar with this particular controller.
Listening to the radio traffic, I noticed she had something of an attitude
problem. Have you had this experience?

The controllers at HPN are pretty good. Sure, they make mistakes on
occassion, but so do all of us. I figure if my error rate was as low as
theirs, I'd be a pretty good pilot.

HPN is a really challenging environment for both pilots and controllers.
First, the mix of traffic is unlike anything you'll see anywhere else.
Lot's of GA, lots of student training, bizjets, turboprops, more
helicopters than you can shake a stick at, and of course scheduled
airlines. Not to mention the occasional blimp. About the only thing
I've never seen at HPN is a glider or an ultralight :-) The airport
layout has two intersecting runways, with many pairs of runway ends not
visible from each other. Cram all that into a complex airspace where
the flow of things is really driven by the flow of heavy metal into LGA,
JFK, and EWR, and it's a mess. Keep your eyes open and your head on a
swivel.

As for attitude, it's really hard to infer subjective things like
emotion and attitude over the radio. I wouldn't read too much into it.