xyzzy wrote:
In an instrument groundschool I took the instructor told a war story of
flying a 172 IFR up the NE coast and ATC tried to route him way out
over the water. He declined that route, no flotation on board, etc. and
ATC said OK, we'll give you vectors to keep you over land and away from
traffic. A while later while flying the vectors he came to a hole in
the clouds and realized they had vectored him well over the water, like
out of sight of land (this was before the days of GPS, etc).

When I wouldn't accept the victor airway/waypoint routing, they tried to
get me to fly the magnetic heading for the same features. I continued
to fly the route I had filed and acknowledged the assigned heading each
time they asked. Strong crosswinds that day.