ONLY 2 LOUSY CONTROLLERS IN ALL MY YEARS OF FLYING...AND THEY WERE BOTH ON THE SAME TRIP!

In all my years of flying I have only encountered two lousy controllers, and it was on the same trip. This was before iPads and apps such as ForeFlight were in the cockpit. I only had a portable Garmin 396 GPS and my Jeppesen charts to fly with. We were traveling from Phoenix Deer Valley, DVT, to Palo Alto, CA , PAO, to visit my daughter and her family. She was a doctor at Stanford Children’s Hospital at the time, and it was homecoming at Stanford. We obtained a weather briefing the night before and the morning of the flight. We planned a fuel stop at Whiteman Airport, WHP, in the LA Basin which is just east of Van Nuys, VNY. The forecast called for IFR hitting the LA Basin and again IFR into PAO. I was talking to SoCal ATC and getting ready to fly the VOR approach into WHP. I was being vectored around and lost some situational awareness of what ATC was trying to do. The next thing they told me I was cleared for the approach into VNY. I told the controller we were going to WHP and read the strip. He then had to vector me around until we were set up for the approach into WHP. We fueled up and obtained our clearance from the tower at WHP for the next part of our trip to PAO. There were never any thunderstorms or icing in the forecast or along our route of flight, just clouds and light rain. Approaching PAO on NoCal approach we were vectored off the airway and given the GPS approach into PAO. The VOR approach was right off the airway we were on, and you have to cross the VOR and turn west to shoot the VOR approach into PAO. This controller never looked at the strip and assumed we were IFR GPS equipped. A supervisor took over from the controller and asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I needed vectors south to get back on the airway to shoot the approach. Thank goodness neither of these events tuned out poorly for us. I have learned a lesson from this in that I always tell approach what airport I am going into and what approach I expect. I have never had a problem since. In all my years of flying this is the only encounter I have had with two incompetent controllers. I would have to say that the rest of my flying experience with ATC has been outstanding. I have been rerouted due to weather on several occasions and all controllers have been extremely helpful. We fly into San Diego Montgomery Field, MYF, about 10 times over the summer. The MEA has been raised just before arriving into MYF from 8,000 feet to 8,400 feet. We fly over at 8,000. We would have to climb 2,000 feet to 10,000 feet with a shotgun descent to 451 feet to land. Additionally the FAA changed the routing for airliners making us do a lot of holding before we could go into MYF. SoCal told us we could fly towards PGY VOR where the MEA is 7,000 feet and not have to climb. This also put us out of the path of airliners and on the south side of the mountains approaching San Diego. Without ATC’s help we would have never known this. It saved a lot of time and holding. Shuster in Congress has been pushing for years to privatize ATC. This is being pushed so ATC can be controlled by the airlines. GA pays a fuel tax that is collected by the government when the fuel is produced. There is no cost of collection. With the new ATC user fees would be put in place for the little guys. This has literally killed GA in countries around the world with prices being too expensive to fly. Shuster also wants to give away approximately $50B of taxpayers assets for a privatized ATC. We have the best ATC system in the world, and it works extremely well. Now is not the time to make changes to this system. In closing I would like to thank all those hard working controllers out there!