Well, only a reading of the ATC tapes would tell you whether the departure
a issue was in your clearance. If it was not, and it is the "100% drill"
to get that departure, you should have sought clarification because you
sensed a crack that you were possibly going to fall through.

As to your distinction between SIDs and DPs, there isn't any in this
country, at least not until they sign out a policy reinstating SIDs.
There are Obstacle DPs and there are ATC DPs. Of course, some of the
charts are old so they state "SID" on them.

No one said it would be easy. ;-)

Roy Smith wrote:

Had a strange thing happen to me today. I filed IFR HPN - HFD (White
Plains NY to Hartford CT). The route part of my clearance came back
"radar vectors Carmel[VOR], V1, Hartford[VOR], Direct".

Usually out of HPN I would expect to get the Westchester-1 departure,
but it wasn't in my clearance, and I when I read back the clearance
without it, I got "readback correct". Seemed a little strange, but I
went with the flow (I should have asked for clarification, I'm not
sure why I didn't). The turn in the SID took us away from our first
fix, so I guess I figured they were just doing us a favor or something
with a shorter routing.

We took off and I started climbing straight out. The HPN-1 has an
almost 180-degree turn almost immediately. The guy I was with asked
me why I wasn't making the turn and I said we weren't on the SID. I
asked tower and they said I should be on the SID.

So, what went wrong? Did I goof? Am I supposed to fly the SID (not a
DP) even though it's not in the clearance? Is it more likely that it
was in the clearance but I just didn't hear it and the controller
didn't notice that it wasn't in the readback?