Bob Fry wrote:
- FSS briefers can and do fail to report vital information, most often
if it's out of their region. Two local pilots, after hearing about
me, related tales of neglected information (a safety TFR and a
malfunctioning VOR) that would be pretty important to flight safety.
They knew about these only by chance, and when they asked the FSS
briefer about them, the response they got was "Oh yea, thanks for
reminding me!" (TFR) and "Oh, does anybody use VORs anymore?" But at
least you'll be on record and your legal butt will be safe, if not
your physical butt.

I discovered a wonderful example of that recently. R-5206 is about 15
miles from White Plains (HPN). It's active mostly in July and August, but
"O/T by NOTAM", and it does indeed get activated from time to time year
round. You would think calling FSS and asking for a "notams in a 25 mile
radius around HPN" would get you the information that R-5206 was hot,
right? WRONG!

It turns out, that R-5206's notams are filed under IGN (Kingston VOR), and
IGN is more than 25 miles from HPN, so the notam doesn't show up in the
25-mile briefing. What idiocy!

I've been flying in the area for 10 years and only found this out a couple
of months ago, pretty much by accident. I asked a student of mine to give
me the highlights of his briefing. I knew 5206 was hot because I saw the
notam (I typically ask duats for a 50-mile radius, and IGN falls within
that). He gave me a complete weather rundown, but didn't mention the
notam. I asked him about 5206, and he said the briefer didn't say anything
about it.

At this point, I started to suspect he hadn't really gotten a briefing, so
I made him get another one, and put it on speaker while I listened. He
did, and sure enough, the briefer said nothing about 5206. Before he hung
up, I asked specifically about 5206 and got the notam telling us it was
hot. It wasn't until sometime later that I put two and two together and
figured out the IGN bit.