"George Patterson" wrote in message
news:Sg5ue.8201$R6.380@trndny04...
Hummm ... When I get a traffic report from ATC and I can't spot the
traffic, the controller usually asks me after a minute or two whether I've
spotted it or not. Wonder if this is an eastcoast/westcoast thing?

Don't know. I usually am able to find the traffic, and do report being in
IMC if that's the case. But I can't remember a single time ATC prodded me
again to see if I was still looking for the traffic or not. That doesn't
mean it's never happened to me, but it certainly doesn't happen often if it
does.

I do fly primarily on the west coast, but I've made flights with extensive
contact with ATC across the entire country, including a couple of
corner-to-corner flights, one of which even took me over to the Bahamas, and
one of which was actually more of a "Z" shape (*) than a beeline from
Florida to Washington State. At least in the brief periods of time I was
flying on the east coast, I didn't experience anything like that.

I never did wind up farther north than Maryland, so maybe it's a Northeast
thing?

I have had ATC follow up a traffic call with a "traffic no factor" if I
haven't reported the traffic in sight (and sometimes even if I have). But
they've never bugged me about whether I've seen the traffic or not, if I
failed to report back to them about that.

This is usually VFR through or into class-C or class-D airspace, so I'm
talking to approach.

Well, one thing I wonder is how ATC's obligation changes if you report the
traffic in sight. That is, if they are providing you with separation
services, but you can report some traffic in sight, maybe they then do not
have to provide you with vectors. Of course, for VFR traffic this is a moot
point, but if they're in the habit of doing it for IFR traffic, they might
still do it for VFR traffic.

If that's the case, then I'd expect that habit to be more pronounced in more
congested airspace, such as that found in the Northeast. Even the Southeast
US doesn't have the traffic density, and in that respect is more similar to
the West.

Pete

(*) I hesitate to even bother fixing the "Z" reference, but I will anyway;
it's imprecise and that bugs me. The route was more of a "Z" rotated 90
degrees, then flipped about the horizontal axis, and finally stretched so
that the middle segment was nearly horizontal. North from Florida, then
almost due West to Lake Tahoe, then finally North again to Seattle. I
covered a lot more airspace during that trip than I did on my true
"corner-to-corner" flight.