Ah, nearly forgot the essence of the thread, ditching ATC. I find FSX ATC to be a pain. The way the program directs you is sometimes bizarre and the descent points and hold ups on the way down are weird and makes flying any sort of climb or descent profile difficult. When you have a lot of AI and a busy terminal area in a big city it really clogs up the system so now I just avoid it unless I feel like being stressed up a bit, but then come to think of it the reason I like flight simming is not to be stressed!

If you like the ambience and simulation fine but as a long time maritime patrol pilot I like being left alone and not being pestered by what we used to call -THE TALKING TRAFFIC LIGHTS, after all we are here to have fun flying the aeroplanes are we not?

What works for me is to start up the ATC dialogue box which seems to fire up AI traffic and ATC then get a take off clearance in the direction I am going then I just go to flight following mode., so I get a little bit of chatter for amibience, frequency changes so I do not have to look them up and the traffic is there as well. I just operate IFR all the way. You can request a clearance later on if you wish for an instrument approach if your following a plan anyway or just go it alone but as MarkOz points out you can get some interesting head to heads sometimes.  :)

AS for FSX ATC well its the pits really, but then so was real life ATC sometimes.