Roy Smith wrote in
:

"Newps" wrote:
We need more information. Exactly where were you and exactly what
did the controller say? If you were VFR and practicing approaches
while VFR then it doesn't matter what he said because the last thing
he'll say is maintain VFR. When you are VFR it is not necessary for
the controller to follow the regs as if you were IFR.

From a purely instructor-centric point of view, I would prefer that
controllers treat VFR practice approaches *exactly* like IFR ones.
It's a training exercise; the more things you do differently from real
life, the less effective the training is.

One thing I see fairly often is controllers not assigning altitudes on
VFR practice approaches. You end up with one of two scenarios,
neither of which is very useful:

1) You stay high until you're so far above the charted descent profile
that you can't possibly make it down in time.

2) You ask the controller for lower and get back, "altitude your
descretion, maintain VFR". A not so sharp student might start to
think that the altitude is ALWAYS his discretion in a situation like
this.

In any case, you end up eating up brain cycles sorting out how high
you should be, when the issue would never come up on an IFR flight.



Every region must have different operating pratices because around here
VFR and IFR approaches are treated almost exactly the same except for the
phrase "maintain VFR".