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SLOP is approved for oceanic. Do you know if it is approved for non-radar environments of the USA? If so, what
are the numbers to use? How do I determine when I am in a non-radar environment in the USA?

As a previous poster posted, you are in a non-radar environment when
you hear "radar contact lost". You are also in a non-radar environment
when you see mandatory reporting points. I believe that this mostly
applies to the great wide West.

No, SLOP does NOT apply, nor is it approved for the USA non-radar
environments. You are expected to fly right down the middle of the
airway.

Now, with respect to the ongoing argument about will/can you run into
someone on an IFR flightplan? Sure you can. I have always been
informed of traffic that the controllers see, so they _are_ trying to
tell us about VFR traffic.

Tell all your pilot friends...if you are going to fly VFR, especially
in IMC do NOT fly on airways. If you are flying IFR and you can do so,
file direct. It's a HUGE sky out there, and the airway and waypoint
system just funnels all of the traffic (which is using it) into a very
small portion of that huge sky. If I am not on an airway, I suspect
that the chances of hazarding upon some fool flying VFR in the clouds
are so small as to be non-existant. How often has it happened (hint,
try zero)? If I am flying IFR in VMC, I have my head out of the
cockpit and on a swivel. And in my (admittedly small) experince, the
controllers are in there pitching and telling me about traffic.

In any of these scenarios, does cross-track offset help? Nah, not
really.

Jim