Dick,
agreed that she could not get ATC on VHF, but that could be due to a lack of VHF repeaters and with the proposed ADSB low level proposal I suspect that the region she was in would have adequate cover.
So how did she contact Flightwatch......not that many bugsmashers have HF?
I do believe still to this day that taking the money from the old worn out enroute radars and putting it into more VHF coverage and ADSB would give everyone the service levels we would like for not any more expense than we have today.
J