Very true and I use flight following maybe more than I should – I say that because in the most trying situations, flight following can fail you and those situations may be the ones where you’re most likely to get in trouble.
Case in point. Yesterday I was coming home from KRDM (working on my IVP project) to 0S9 on the Washington Olympic Peninsula in my Beech Sierra, coming north I was beneath a scattered to broken to overcast layer that was lowering the further north I got. By the time I was clearing the last of the foothills east of Olympia and south of Tacoma, I was at 3,500 feet with maybe less than 1,000 feet clearance over the last of the mts. Seattle approach abruptly calls me and says “radar contact lost, squawk 1200” etc.
This one wasn’t truly that bad a deal but it reminds me I have been in tighter boxes than that where contact with ATC was extremely helpful and a smooth transition to IFR was the only sensible solution if I wanted to continue rather than turn around and retreat.
Point is that they can cut you off at the worst times whether for the above reason or just cuz they’re busy. On the other hand if you file IFR as someone suggested, then you can just convert to that when you get a call like this one. But you don’t always need to do that either and I could have easily simply asked the controller for IFR handling, told him I could provide my own terrain clearance in a climb and proceeded that way.
99 percent of the time the controllers are much more helpful than this guy and they’ll watch for you to pop up again, or discuss options with you.
ATC controllers are a great bunch to work with but occasionally things can get vexing and hairy when someone in that crowd is less than understanding or having a bad day.
My opinion.
John Barrett
From: Lancair Mailing List [mailto:lml@lancaironline.net] On Behalf Of Luke Alcorn
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 5:31 AM
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Subject: [LML] Re: Correction on IFR/VFR flight plans
If you still want to activate a Vfr flight plan you would also need to file a Vfr flight plan and then open and close it with flight service. If you are on flight following there is really no reason to also do a Vfr flight plan. If you go down the search and rescue timeline is much better on flight following than FSS waiting until you are 30 minutes overdue at your destination and then they start looking.
Luke,
If I use this procedure, do I still have to open my flight plan with the FSS or is automatically opened in the same manner as an IFR flight plan?
Danny Miller
N 38° 43' 25.7"
W 77° 30' 38.6"
I miss spoke on my previous post about how to file the VFR flight plan to get it in the system 100% of the time. If you use DUATS/DUAT, you will need to select IFR domestic or ICAO flight plan. Then enter the altitude as VFR/075 or what ever your cruise altitude will be. VFR/115 VFR/165 etc. By selecting the IFR flight plan, that will send it to the center computer which will put it in the IFR system. If you select VFR flight plan, it sends it to FSS's computer, which will not enter it in the centers computer. When ever you file the flight plan, the message DUATS sends back will tell you where it went when it filled it. The center computers names all start with a Z, i.e. ZJX is jacksonville center, ZTL is atlanta center, ZFW is fort worth center, etc. If you see the message, filled with MCN or GNV, that means the flight plan was filled as a VFR only and went into the FSS computer, which does not send the flight plan into the ATC system. I tried this with fltplan.com and it will not let you select a VFR altitude for an IFR flight plan, so I do not know if it can be done through that site, but I don't use fltplan.com so I can not be sure.
I have tested this at work and it works great every time. It also puts a flight plan sitting in our departure list, so when you call ATC up for flight following, we already have all of your information.
Luke Alcorn
NATCA ZJX Safety Rep
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