I suspect that you were either out of, or aboiut to be out of, his airspace.
Thus " I can not clear you ........" (until you fly northeast to get back in
my airspace). I would hope that a controller would have said 'unable -
contact approach on xxx.yy for your clearance'.

Or perhaps you could have proposed to mcGuire that you continue VFR and open
with the next controller


"Kobra" wrote in message
. ..
Fellow Aviators,

I was flying on Tuesday from N14 in NJ to Baltimore-Washington Airport. I
was going IFR because of the Washington ADIZ.

When I called McGuire Approach for my clearance I was given the route and
all information except my release, void and advise times. They said to
call back in 10 minutes for release.

Ok...so I taxi down to the runway, do my run-up and pre-takeoff checks and
wait the remaining time twiddling my thumbs for the full 10 minutes (hobbs
running the whole time of course). I call in and they tell me that there
will be another delay and to call back in 10 more minutes.

I could have shut the engine down and waited, but I was also on a tight
schedule as I had to be back to work at 3:00 pm and the current time was
about 10:45 am.

I said to my passenger, "we're gonna take off VFR and fly the filed route
at 4,500 feet and then request opening the IFR flight plan in the air.
After I said this I thought to myself, I bet this move will tick-off the
controller and he'll end up giving me some random circuitous vectors just
to show me who's boss.

Sure enough as soon as I got leveled off on the first airway (V16) I
called approach and requested my IFR flight plan be activated. The
response was, "...I can't activate you're flight plan unless you fly 5
miles northeast..." Of course I was headed southwest. I turned around and
flew about 8 miles before I again asked for my plan to be opened. I was
told to standby and after another 2 minutes finally got my plan activated.

Now, my question is: If I wasn't in his airspace (which I think I was)
couldn't he have just told me to continue and contact Atlantic City
approach to open my plan? Do you think I was being "paid back" for
circumventing ATC's authority?

Kobra