M14P,
Thanks for the comprehensive report. I think I will print that off and file it away for future reference: reference of how disoriented it's possible to become when the chips are really down, and reference of how helpful D&D can be.
Have never had to use either D&D or any other ATC service when I've been truely lost, but I have asked for help on occassion, and I have to re-iterate what others have said: we have the best ATC in the world, IMHO, so use them! My most memorable experience to date was when they helped me locate an invisible farm-strip. I'd spent the best part of 15 minute circling overhead the area where I believed the strip to be, but couldn't see it, so I contacted a nearby radar facility. They gave me headings and distances, dug out their own copy of, I presume, Lockyears and passed me information about the strip, and generally reassured me.
I did eventually find the strip. I had become so fixed on a runway-like bit of concrete that wasn't quite the right orientation that I completely failed to notice the narrow, straight bit of unmarked road, just 100 yards away, that was the strip I was looking for. I'd been in the right place all along, and the information they gave me about the strip I already knew from my own copy of Lockyears, so there was really no practical help they could offer me, but even so it was great to have a reassuring voice on the other end of the r/t doing his best to help me, and no doubt stopped me from becoming disoriented in the that this guy seems to have been when M14P overheard him.
Glad that, in the case M14P overheard, it seems that everything turned out ok.
FFF
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