ATC Unable…at this time.

Today Ed and I flew an IFR training flight from Auburn to Ellensburg. The Cardinal doesn’t have the best climb rate and we decided to wait to obtain our IFR flight plan clearance while airborne near our required altitude. Well, we didn’t get the chance to ask…

[@RegularItemShow]

"Cessna with request"
"No"
"Okay"

[@Nord3202]

There flying a Cessna C 177 Cardinal it has a full cantilever wing. Beautiful plane & nice ones hard to find. In production only 10 years. Incredible visibility down & up. Pilot sits almost ahead of the wing.

[@timsun6810]

Instead of with request when they answer your initial call just say the request. Call up without the request- otherwise how would they know you're trying to open ifr which is a very different request than when they don't want to bother with vfr flight following.

[@PilotAndrew]

If we really wanted to we could call them back. The weather wasn’t a factor and we still had valuable IFR training this flight. If the weather was crappy we would have called clearance delivery on the ground before.

[@timsun6810]

@@PilotAndrew also valid ;)