stepwilk,
CTAF is Common Traffic Advisory Frequency.
It is used for airport areas and also used for regions as well. I don't have a New York area chart, but on my Seattle chart there is a large area around the San Juan Islands. A little box on the chart shows: " CTAF in vicinity of San Juan Islands is 128.25MHZ.
I am interested in this point because I recently did a BFR with a new instructor. He strongly suggested the use of "VFR Flight Following".
I decided to give flight following a try in the San Juan Island area, so I called Whidbey Approach for this. Unfortunately, while on the approach frequency, I was unable to monitor the San Juan area CTAF.
So now, I think the suggestion from the instructor to always request VFR Flight Following was not the best plan for this region.
And maybe not the best plan for the Hudson corridor.
slowrotor