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flight following vs EFB

Asked by: 1400 views General Aviation

Has EFBs reduced the use of flight following?  Would you still recommend using flight following on relatively short, less than 100 nm. trips if you have an EFB.

 

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2 Answers



  1. Mark Kolber on Jan 20, 2020

    The two have nothing to do with each other. My use of Flight Following has not changed at all in the 9 years I have used an EFB. I don’t even see a god reason why it would.

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  2. histriosum on Jan 20, 2020

    I’m just a student pilot, but I thought I’d give my perspective..

    I assume by an EFB, that you mean one which also displays ADS-B TIS-B info. Otherwise, I don’t understand the basis of your question, as without traffic information you’re just as blind as you ever were without the EFB..

    As a student pilot, I *love* flight following. I don’t expect my feelings on this to change once I take my checkride and get my certificate, either. I also fly with an EFB with ADS-B traffic information displayed. In no particular order, the things I love about flight following:
    – I’m already always talking to someone, so in the event of an emergency, I don’t need to play the 121.5 game or hunt for a frequency. I’m already tuned to the right frequency to declare on.
    – ADS-B is wonderful, but it is not complete nor foolproof. Flight Following radar operators have access to primary radar returns as well — I’ve gotten traffic notices from Flight Following which were a primary return only, which ended up being a flock of birds.. which is useful info as well, and they’re definitely not squawking 😉
    – I’m planning to roll right into my instrument rating training, and the more exposure to the ATC system I can get the better
    – By and large, ATC folks seem to be wonderful people who work their butts off to keep us safe. I feel better knowing that if there’s a situation developing along my route of flight, they’ll be letting me know what the scoop is.
    – At least in these parts, the controllers usually are able to handle coordinating airspace transitions for me if I’m in the top 1k or so of a Delta. I like not needing to repeat my intentions.
    – Because I’m always talking to the ATC folks, I’m becoming very aware of which frequencies are useful at which altitudes in my area. There are a few no-mans zones where I should be talking with Detroit Approach, but I can’t read them yet. Having exposure to these frequency coverage ins and outs makes me feel safer, and I wouldn’t have a clue if I wasn’t using FF.

    I didn’t have ADS-B for my EFB when I first started, but honestly, the only time I could see having ADS-B IN keep me from contacting flight following is if I’m going somewhere close enough that by the time I get my squawk code they’ll be handing me off to the destination tower. In that case, I’d probably just lean on the ADS-B IN display on my EFB.

    My question to you would be — why wouldn’t you want to use both? What would be the advantage to NOT talking to ATC?

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