Radar Services Terminated

Ghery said:
Look at the SEA sectional and follow V204 from OLM to YKM. As you are tooling along VFR with FF you will have a section of that route where radar services are terminated because you are shadowed from their radar by Mt. Rainier. You leave the transponder alone as you will emerge from the shadow on the other side and you still need the code. Unless the controller says "Squawk VFR", leave the code alone.
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There are places in California where that happens if you are at the MEA, and some of them are not even behind tall mountains.
 
roncachamp said:
You said only, ".... the TRACON controller thought he had told me to squawk 1200, but forgot to." Keeping the code when landing at a towered airport with a radar display makes sense, the tower controller has a data block showing callsign, type, altitude, and position.
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Okay, I was oversimplying the scenario because I didn't want to go into the details, which were pretty messed up IMO.

But I don't see that it makes a difference. If "keeping the code when landing at a towered airport with a radar display makes sense", then whether the approach controller forgot to tell me to squawk VFR but thought he had when he arranged the hand-off, or explicitly told me to keep it and then told Tower something else, the end result is the same confusion when Tower gets my checkin call and sees me squawking the discrete code. And it sounds like the tower guy's operation was affected by it, after all. Or am I still misunderstanding you?
 
azure said:
But I don't see that it makes a difference. If "keeping the code when landing at a towered airport with a radar display makes sense", then whether the approach controller forgot to tell me to squawk VFR but thought he had when he arranged the hand-off, or explicitly told me to keep it and then told Tower something else, the end result is the same confusion when Tower gets my checkin call and sees me squawking the discrete code.
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The only reason the approach controller would tell you to keep the discrete code would be to display a full data block on the tower radar scope showing your callsign, type aircraft, altitude, and location. You check in with the tower with that callsign, type aircraft, etc., and the result is confusion? How can that be?

And it sounds like the tower guy's operation was affected by it, after all.
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How so? Did it cause him to issue a go around? Was there a runway incursion? What was the effect?

Sounds to me like the tower guy's just a d!ckhead.
 
roncachamp said:
Well, the radar controller wasn't using it for separation either, only for information on other displayed traffic.
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If I'm on board (on radar and freq) with a discrete squawk with flight following.. I should hope is is providing seperation from his other traffic on descrete squawks! :hairraise:
 
BillTIZ said:
If I'm on board (on radar and freq) with a discrete squawk with flight following.. I should hope is is providing seperation from his other traffic on descrete squawks! :hairraise:
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It's only guaranteed to IFR flights (and even then only while they're in IMC). Separation is NOT guaranteed to VFR flights receiving flight following, regardless of what they're squawking.
 
BillTIZ said:
If I'm on board (on radar and freq) with a discrete squawk with flight following.. I should hope is is providing seperation from his other traffic on descrete squawks! :hairraise:
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Nope. With flight following you get traffic advisories and safety alerts, nothing more.
 
roncachamp said:
Nope. With flight following you get traffic advisories and safety alerts, nothing more.
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And even then, human error gets into the mix.

Hence: Keep your eyes looking out the window! :incazzato: ;)
 
Wow ! I thought I posed a simple question. All the comments have been helpful. Thanks everyone !
 
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