Being asked to "verify direct XXX"

ATC can't see your heading, just your ground track. They would have no way
of knowing that you are off-course by a "couple of degrees."

Bob Gardner

"Paul Folbrecht" wrote in message
...
I'm a new IFR pilot, having gotten my ticket end of January.

One thing I've quickly picked up on is that ATC pretty much expects
everybody to be able to navigate direct. If you tell them you've got a
VFR GPS (in your remarks), they'll happily give you direct clearances and
instructions while airborne. I've learned to deal with that (by really
learning how to use my GPS), though I really still wonder about the whole
thing and marvel at the fact that they'll expect me to navigate under IFR
with this thing without a current database (I don't keep the DB current
and there's certainly no reason at all they should expect that I do). (I
am planning to do somewhat regular DB updates from here on out, but it's
not going to be every month.)

Anyway, on to my question. A couple times now, when I've been navigating
direct, either to a fix or airport identifiable by VORs or one that isn't
(such as an uncontrolled field with no navaid), I've been asked to "verify
direct XXX" when I'm off course by a quite small amount - no more than 10
degrees. Or, perhaps, I've gotten off course a bit and have a larger
heading correction (20-25 degrees) in to get back on track, momentarily.
I've never had a controller sound annoyed, but it does concern me a bit
that they see fit to more or less ask "Are you sure you know where you're
going"??

I've vowed to put a stop to this, and I have realized that I should
probably pay even closer attention to my heading. I am meticulous about
holding alt but, obviously, heading is important too. Flying single-pilot
IFR with no autopilot, with turbulence, it can be a challenge in those
moments where the workload is high for a bit..

My two-part question is 1) Should I be concerned at all by being asked
such a question by ATC? And 2) Just _what_ is the IFR "heading
tolerance", anyway?? Meaning, what sort of heading deviance is large
enough that you can be violated for it? Does such a figure even exist? I
expected this to be something fairly simple to find in the regs and it was
not.

TIA.

~Paul Folbrecht
~PP-SEL-IA
~'79 C152
~MWC