Dan Luke wrote:
Another one of those things I guess I should have been ready for sneaked up
on me this morning.

I don't see why you feel you 'should have been ready'.

There's no ATIS at EET, so no particular approach was being advertised. When
Montgomery approach handed us off to Birmingham, BHM approach told me to
expect the VOR-A. I asked him "...any chance we can do the RNAV 33?"

"Nope. It's not in my airspace. You should have asked Montgomery for that
one. Standy by and I'll see if they'll take you back."

....

The interesting thing is BHM's comment that I "...should have asked
Montgomery for that one." How was I to know that? BHM is named on plates as
the approach facility for EET. There's no ATIS at EET. What should I have
done to find out that BHM couldn't give me the RNAV 33 approach?

I don't think there's a thing you could have done. BHM was listed
as the approach facility, I would have waited until transferred to BHM
to ask for the approach I wanted. If it was less than 30 nm out, might
query ATC facility I'm talking to "N123 requests RNAV 33 at EET", which
would probably get you a "I'll be handing you off in a minute, ask them"
response most of the time but would have helped this time.

A while back on these newsgroups, I was asking how to get a chart of
the airspace different facilities control. I was told I might as well
ask for the moon, more likely.

At a guess, does it look feasible it might be one of these "1 IAF
in his airspace, 2 in mine" things, where there isn't really provision
to indicate different facilities?

What I don't understand is why the BHM controller didn't just
coordinate with Montgomery for you instead of shipping you back.
They obviously can talk to each other -- why wouldn't it be easier
to just have Montgomery approve whatever it was BHM needed for you
to fly the approach, since the airport was apparently in their
airspace?

Oh well. Be interested to see what other answers you get,
Sydney