"John T" writes:

What does it give you that VFR FF doesn't?

(I won't comment on filing IFR in VMC without a rating -- I'm pretty
sure that's illegal in Canada, even if there is some loophole in the
U.S.)

When I got passed on from Ottawa Terminal to Toronto Centre on Monday,
the controller initially didn't bother to check his slips (or
whatever) or pay attention to my reported altitude, but just answered

"aircraft requesting flight following, standby"

and went straight to another call. Oops. I gave him five minutes to
figure things out, while he was possibly busy on the phone with other
ATC units, or just hoping I'd give up and leave him alone (the
frequency wasn't busy), then I called again with a small addition to
the end:

"Toronto Centre, this is Cherokee foxtrot bravo juliet oscar, level
8 thousand on victor 316, *IFR*."

Boy, I got an answer quickly that time. South of the border in New
Jersey, before I was rated, I had trouble getting VFR flight following
from New York on a departure out from KCDW after 11:00 pm -- the
controller just didn't want to talk to me. I could hear his
transmission to every other aircraft perfectly clearly, but every time
he called me he broke up into static (do controllers ever play tricks
with their mic buttons to get rid of VFR pilots, instead of simply
saying "unable," or was it just a weird coincidence?).


All the best,


David

--
David Megginson, , http://www.megginson.com/