Thedude

But in this case I was talking to approach and following their instructions to "follow the freeway and make right traffic for 25" and I switched frequencies with no delay when they handed me off. My main question is whether that is sufficient to meet the requirements as stated in the FARs, and as far as I can tell from the comments here, it is, but that's all I'm trying to clarify.

This is what I'm asking to clarify, can you point me to the FARs relevant here? I'm more than happy to accept that I screwed up, I just want some advice on understanding what my responsibilities are.

I was talking to Santa Barbara approach for my whole trip. I was on 125.4, which is always the final frequency before tower when I fly down there and also the departure frequency. They handed me off 3 miles from the airport after telling me to make right traffic 25. I called the tower and they said I can't enter the Charlie without talking to the tower 10 miles out. That didn't make sense, but I was just seeking input, not looking to argue at that point.

So you disagree with midlifeflyer's post?

That's very helpful, thank you.

This was on a 2 hour flight back from KTVL, the screen had a band across it. It was like it wanted to go into night mode but didn't flip the whole screen. Anyone know what's going on?

This is what I'm trying to understand better. Do you know what the applicable regulations are that I should read up on? Do I need to be talking to tower before entering the Charlie at all or just the inner ring or is talking to approach enough to meet the requirements (sounds like you're saying that's not the case?)?

Ya they do that to me too, I don't want to be out over the ocean, hence the FF instead of IFR I do that as well too, I could have been more proactive in engaging them here, but I don't think it was more than a couple minutes since I had talked to them last before handing me off. I may have been moving faster than they were expecting, idk That's a good idea. I hate getting sent out over the ocean for 10+ minutes. With that said, off the departure of 25 doesn't have a whole lot of hospitable landing areas either, SB is rough terrain all around.

Ya that would have been a much better thing to say. I was scrambling a bit as I was caught off guard.

Ya that's a smart idea, I'm going to adjust my procedures as you suggest here

That points to what the controllers are supposed to do, do you know where in the FARs it specifies what we're supposed to do, if anything? Also why would he say he didn't care we were on FF... Ohh, maybe he thought we were handled off a while back and never chimed in on frequency? That could make a lot more sense. They definitely forgot about me though and the fact that approach wanted me on right traffic 25 which put me on right base for 15R while there was traffic doing on pattern work on 15L shows a big lack of coordination.

Correct, I asked for it upon landing and exiting the runway. In the air, when I first contacted tower, after them yelling at me, I said I was on FF, they then said that didn't matter and I penetrated their airspace, then I said I was just handed off and their tone changed and everything was as if it didn't happen. Either way, I just wanted to focus on flying and stay off frequency so they could handle coordination. Thanks for the input here though, it feels a bit better knowing I didn't do something obviously wrong (and maybe not wrong at all) at the very least.

Yesterday I was flying south to ksba (Santa Barbara) on flight following with Santa Barbara approach. As I come over GVO I inform them of descending and they say "follow the freeway to make right traffic 25". Usually GA VFR traffic from the north west lands 15R, but 25 had better winds, so I follow the instruction and at about 3 miles from the airport and at TPA I'm handed over to tower who then berates me for entering their class C without talking to the tower. At this point I see there's traffic in the pattern for 15L and they have me do a 360 and enter right base for 15R. I get their phone number when I land because I'm confused and give them a call afterwards and they clarify I need to be in contact with the tower 10 miles out before entering the Charlie. I've never had this happen before and I assumed (likely incorrectly) that talking to the approach facility at an airport was sufficient to meet the class C communication requirements. Does anyone know the FARs and should I have stayed outside the class C before getting a hold of tower?

I'm on my phone and it shows the notifications at the bottom of the page, I just wasn't following this topic for some reason. I need to go through my settings as suggested above.

Huh, I'm on this site like multiple times a day and I never got a notification of new replies. I thought I would be auto-following any topic I started... Either way, getting up into the headliner seems like a very time consuming task, and I'm pretty short on time atm, so I never started going down that path. I was curious about how the "gear unsafe" circuit worked, because when that would turn on is exactly when the CB pops and stays unresetable. So out of curiosity when I had an hour after work, I started pulling out the part of the panel that had the annunciator lights as that gear unsafe light is part of the circuit and this should be an easy task. It took like 10 minutes to pull out and realize what a can of worms that was going to be: the test button from the annunciator panel just fell off because the solder was non-existent and the face plate took some gymnastics to keep in place to put back together. 30 minutes or so I got it put back together (minus the test button) and all the lights still worked so I postponed for when I'd have more time. Fast forward to yesterday, I go for a flight and everything worked fine: gear unsafe light illuminated and no CB popped. I have no idea what the original issue was, but it's something related to where I was screwing around in the panel, which was mainly just the annunciator panel, however the CB panel is just one over from that and maybe I pulled on some wires and that removed the issue. I figured out how to remove the glare shield towards the end of my exploration the other day, so I'm going to spend some more time digging into this properly when I have the chance.