Did you keep the FF squawk code or go back to 1200?

Ah, good point. We kept squawking the code we were given till we
landed. I wonder if we had switched to 1200, if Chicago would have
seen that and figured out that we were landing (rather than crashing?)
in Rantoul?

Usually Chicago won't accept a hand-off from adjacent controllers,

Chicago center will accept handoffs, but Chicago approach probably
will not. Having said that, even if Center cancels your FF because of
no handoff, once you get near Approach's airspace, you can call
Approach and they will almost always provide flight following through
the area.

It seems like lately no one is accepting hand-offs from anyone along
the Lake Michigan shoreline. We flew to Wisconsin yesterday, and
Rockford wasn't able to hand us off to Milwaukee on the flight inbound.

On the flight westbound, later in the day, Milwaukee handed us off to
Rockford without difficulty, but they, in turn, cut us loose before we
even hit the Mississipi, which was very unusual -- especially on a
sleepy Sunday evening. (I swear, we were the only plane he was
handling.)

Usually RFD will seamlessly hand us off to Quad Cities approach. We
called up QC once we hit the Big Muddy, and they were able to handle us
without difficulty.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"