Manymak,
Thanks for the tip about the IFR sartime for departure. But when you are operating charter flights (especially out of aboriginal communities) the actual time of departure plus or minus an hour is always a wild guess. If you compound that with the fact that the airstrip is usually quite a few miles from any sort of telephone simply increases the difficulty.
We do however, insist that the troopie (who dropped off or picked up the passengers) DOES wait after you have departed, which in turn gives you time to make contact with ATC before the drive off.
At night, however dept. SARTIME's are always used when departing from remote strips.
No worries. Pleasure I could be of some help.
I can see where you coming from. But what you can do in that case, and also if you are trouble getting HF on the ground at some communities. Is call up briefing as you are about to start up. You can then give a taxi report to them via phone, that will then activate your flight plan and they will give you any appropriate traffic and then activate your IFR SARWATCH.
Ps. Testra Next G is a must for any remote pilot IMO. It has worked in about 85-90% communities I've been in.