"Brad Z" wrote in message news:ONwJc.61657$WX.41886@attbi_s51...
After the cold front passed last night, my instrument student and I took off
VFR from FCI, about 11 miles from Richmond Intl (just outside of Class C).
We had just departed 33, climbing though 1200MSL when I spotted traffic in
the distance to the west. On this particular evening, Potomac approach was
bringing in IFR arrivals to RIC down to 2000 right over FCI. The traffic
pattern at FCI is 1200. Upon spotting the traffic we leveled off at about
1400, and turned towards the north. Meanwhile, we just switched over from
CTAF to the Potomac Approach facility, were the controller was pointing us
out to the MD80, who only saw us on TCAS. After the traffic was no longer a
factor, we climbed to 2000, proceeded on course, and requested advisories
from Approach.

After the controller gave us a squawk code, he chewed us our for not calling
him sooner. "You should call us before you reach about 1200 ft because we
have arrivals from the west and you caused a MD80 to get a TCAS RA." I
suspect our initial climb out of the pattern was interpreted by TCAS as
being on a collision course.

Brad,

Kudos to you for not getting into it on frequency, but IMO I would
strongly consider filing an ASRS on this, not because YOU did anything
wrong, but because the controller needs to understand that *if he is
going to vector IFR traffic 800 ft above a non-towered airport, the
IFR traffic *is* going to get TCAS alerts and need to deviate. Around
here, at least, it's pretty standard to overfly the airport 500 ft
above TPA then descend to TPA.

And you're absolutely right, IFR traffic does not have priority over
VFR traffic in VMC -- see and avoid applies to both.

Sounds to me as though some controllers need to be educated, and I
hear that the ASRS forms really do get reviewed.

You might consider calling Approach, too, though I'm not sure how
much good that does long after the event.

Cheers,
Sydney