Hey Ron,
I took some time and listened to the recordings of your flights to see what happened. Here's some of the details from the other side:
Then… Instead of telling me to go direct to Seal Beach, which I had tuned the VOR for already, he controller directed me to go to a heading I wasn’t expecting, then to follow a radial on the Santa Monica VOR (Don’t remember which one.). I tuned to the radial, forgetting that Nav1 was on Seal Beach (SLI).
This instruction was to join the SMO 125 radial which was on your route of flight just a little down the line. Basically the controller gave you a shortcut, this shortcut is actually the standard real world procedure for SNA departures. It prevents you from having to go to SLI (NE) just to turn westbound. It's not the IFR clearance as the IFR clearance has to allow for lost comms (in a lost comm situation it's easier for you to get to SLI then a random SMO radial).
This is very true. I flew on, and eventually got an odd radial (not the one in the TEC route) to fly outbound from Santa Monica VOR.
Your instruction was to "depart Santa Monica on heading 300" this isn't an instruction to join a radial, just a radar vector.
I started to turn to 050, got told not to by ATC.
I'm still not sure what you are exactly referring to here. The sequence of events at this point was:
1. Controller issued you a clearance for the ILS approach. It was "3 miles from Silex, fly heading 050, start your turn now please, maintain 3000 until established on the localizer, cleared ILS runway 8 approach."
2. You read it back.
3. Shortly thereafter (I can't tell you how long as the recordings remove the silences between transmissions) the controller asked if you had started your turn.
4. Based on the next transmission it looks like you failed to join the localizer as instructed, this results in you entering an area of high terrain North of the localizer.
5. The controller has to issue a low altitude alert and does so. At this point you indicate that you will be disconnecting.
At that point, I decided to politely log off and try again another night. I apologize if my voice was strained, or if I sounded terse. My frustration level was exceeding my ability to learn, and I didn’t feel like stumbling around the airspace. I’m a little type A that way. All I could think of was that I was supposed to be flying a TEC route, and got steamed.
No worries, you sounded composed on the recording. Additionally the controller didn't make any note of the event to us so we consider it a non-event.
So that's what happened based on the recordings, please let me know if you have any questions.