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VFR Flight Following Why?

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I always had my students get flight following just so they had someone already keyed up to talk to in case something happened. Student pilots have a propensity for getting lost, so I always wanted them to have someone to talk to instead of searching around on their sectional trying to find the closest FSS repeater for a direction steer. If they've been talking to someone from the start of the cross country, then ATC already knows where they are and can help if they get lost.
 
I guess there is not a high confidence level in see and avoid.
 
pilotyip said:
I guess there is not a high confidence level in see and avoid.

No, there's not, because I was doing "see and avoid" when I noticed a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. I look to the right and see a light twin (about baron sized) in a 90 degree bank angle pulling away from me. I could see the stains on the underbelly. It lost at least 500 feet in that maneuver. Had the other pilot waited a fraction of a second longer, we both would have been fish bait (there was a river beneath us). Had I been using flight following, it probably wouldn't have happened.

So no, I don't have a high confidence level in see and avoid. I'll take every aid I can get to help me out.
 
ive had more close encounters when 'talking to someone' than when I was vfr and no talky.

If you are vfr, its "as workload permits",.

Heck, even when IFR (but vmc) I don't count on atc to add any huge layer of protection from collision.

Once, IFR and mostly imc, a pax reported an airplane zip past us very close behind.

the big hole below the nose can help, but the two above the nose are much more important.
 
I totally agree about instilling the habit in student pilots, that said, Do as I say not as I do :D

I can't remember the last time I used flight following, it's nice sure but I personally go above the airspace (at least charlie) if I'm going somewhere far. I've noticed the younger instructors are addicted to it, my one old timer never made me use it...I like the old school approach.

It's occupying enough dealing with the controller's mood swings when I'm in the soup trying to get him to clear me for the approach without vectoring me to China, to also do it for the fun of it and talk to him/her while VFR? Maybe at night if I'm lonely and he's falling asleep, but day-VFR? pfff, forget that....:D

I need to go castigate myself now and re-read my ADM for being a naughty anti-authority little boy :D
 
I guess old timers who never really used it in the VFR environment get along just fine without VFR flight following and the new generation who get raised in the radar environment feels uncomfortable without having radar contact. I am wondering how students in these new glass cockpit C-172's will ever have time to look outside the cockpit, so maybe radar flight following is the wave of the future. I wonder how user fees will effect this?
 
You're all acting like it's a replacement for looking outside. It's NOT IN ANY WAY a replacement for looking outside, but it is one more set of eyes looking out for you, and that is a fact that can not be changed by any number of arguments by "crusty old timers".

It doesn't matter if your eyes are better, it doesn't matter if the controller is half asleep, it doesn't matter if the frequency is busy. It's still another set of eyes, and the chances of catching another airplane before it becomes a conflict go up, no matter what your opinion of ATC or flight following is.

I "got along just fine without VFR flight following" too, until that baron came within fractions of a second of killing me (beautiful day VFR). Even then I didn't start, it took a Citation nearly cutting me in half with it's tail as it climbed out (beautiful day VFR), and even that didn't do it. It finally took the time when I was doing power on stalls with a student, and I got that wierd sixth sense notion that I should put the nose down and clear the front again, and when I did I saw another airplane coming straight at us (beautiful day VFR). Third time's the charm, I take any help I can get, regardless of how little it is.
 
I fly a bizjet in SOCAL. I really want the VFR guys talking to ATC when I'm in the neighborhood. The more people "in the loop" the better.

'Sled
 

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