Roy Smith wrote:

wrote:
The one essential role, though of the FSS, is when it is the only RCO
on a non-towered, IFR airport (example, KBIH). Center often hands
you off to the FSS for IFR ATC relay purposes well before you begin
the approach. Likewise, on IFR departure, you're with the FSS for
quite a time at some of these airports.

I never saw the point of these FSS RCOs. From a technology point of
view, once you've got the automated radio gear on the field, it's just
as easy to run a land-line circuit direct to ATC as it is to run it to
FSS.

The FSS can provide services for VFR flight plans and weather. In a remote
area where only the center were linked to the RCO the center controller
would end up with that burden. Plus, if radar coverage is nonexistant
until in the low flight levels, such as at KBIH, the relay works and frees
up the center controller working traffic from having to work the non-radar
arrivals and departures directly.