Hey all! This my first post here so hello and thank you for reading! I had a mildly unpleasant experience on my flight into Atlanta this afternoon on the training server and I just wanted to list the things that happened and see if there is something I did wrong and just open a discussion for the things I experienced. I’ll try to keep it as short as possible. Call sign MA544 Myair CRJ-1000. I built a flight plan from Key West to Atlanta, a VOR about 20 miles south of my destination was my initial descent fix and I had built my plan to wrap around the airport and make right traffic for RWY 28. Before I reached my first VOR I was told I was in an active airspace but I was still a good bit off of the blue circles. I contacted the tower and was told to immediately enter a left base for 28, which is fine I guess, but it isn’t what I intended to do. So I listened and entered the base and final. 2 mile final and there’s a plane taking off on 28 so I announce go around. This was annoying because I was the only arrival and this aircraft departing was maybe one of three at the airport. All other runways were available. I’m climbing runway heading and tower instructs me to make left traffic for 28, furthermore the tower clears me to land on 28. Instantly an approach controller joins the session and barks that I’m active airspace and to contact him. So I do. He puts me on a downwind way all the way to the end of the localizer and completely disregards that I requested a visual approach and tells me to maintain 2000ft until on the localizer, which I do. Took me a frantic minute to set auto pilot, tune the ILS etc. Then about 2 mile final all controllers leave and none of it mattered at all.
Recap: am I required to contact ATC while outside of the blue airspace circles?
If Tower doesn’t instruct me to contact approach on a go around, am I required to? Especially after I was given clearance to land by tower and the approach controller just showed up out of nowhere.
Can controllers be a little more mindful of scheduled flight plans instead of just immediately issuing vectors once I’ve made contact?
If a controller tells me to go ILS after I’ve requested visual, do I have to listen to them and input ILS frequencies when I know exactly where I am and don’t the help of ILS?
Thank you all for reading, if these questions are answered somewhere else on the forum I apologize for the redundancy. Cheers!