If there wasn't a need for services such as FIS then they wouldn't exist. They do exist because they are required and that is why they are valuable.
They exist firstly because it is an ICAO obligation to provide an FIS. The majority of services provided to GA exist due to ICAO obligations and not because of some desire to be nice to GA.
They are indeed valuable (for the specific things I mentioned earlier) but not for aiding your own navigation.
I can assure you that we stop a large number of CAS / DA infringements and also help reduce the severity of many others who do.
I can see that if somebody reports their position but isn't looking at their chart, then you can tell them they are busting. But how can you stop a bust unless you have access to radar, or refer the pilot to 121.5.
I leave base going south I have to negotiate Southend, so why not talk to them and get a FIS so they know where I am and they can let me know about other traffic?
Also thanks to talking to them I avoided my first CAS infringement
Yes Emma but again Southend has
radar. So, even under an FIS, the ATCO there can see (unofficially of course
) especially given he has VDF, that a certain blip (they have no SSR feed so cannot see the transponder codes) is almost certainly you. And if he can see you are about to bust, he can call you up and ask you to check your position (without, of course, suggesting openly on the radio that he can see you). I call up Southend myself every time I go that way - because they have radar.
But I don't call up London Info because they cannot see me, and they ask for estimates to waypoints which I can give them easily enough (because they are programmed in the GPS) but I don't see the value of this to me or anybody else.
London Info is a great service and I do use it but I cannot see the value for navigation. If they had radar it would be a completely different proposition.
What irritates me is the stupid officialdom and job demarcation which prevent ATCOs everywhere getting a radar feed. Technically it's a piece of cake.
When we get ADS-B this stupid restrictive practice will be moot anyway because every plane spotter will have his own private radar, for a few hundred quid and a laptop, and as accurate as the GPS in each plane.