Anyone offering 'Basic' not worth the trouble - unless you are over the Scottish Highlands or water
Not so, it's worth talking to any radar unit - LARS or not -even if they only offer a basic service, any decent atco will always try and give you information on any other traffic in the vicinity.
Getting any other type of service from a radar unit depends very much on your height, the licensed range of radar cover of the unit, traffic levels and your ability to accept a traffic or deconfliction service.
Bear in mind that talking to London FIS or not talking to anyone is all very well, but you won't get any information on possible conflicting traffic which isn't on frequency, FIS do their best but they cover a huge area between the FISOs and can't see what is going on and they aren't as up to speed on regional/localised activities which may affect you as a radar/approach unit will be.
There are some who consider ATC to be the devil incarnate, others who love us so much they want to talk all day, personally I would advocate an radar unit over London FIS any day, purely because of what I've written above.
All I would say is, that if you aren't talking or don't want to talk to an ATC unit, leave your transponder on with mode C (or S if you are flash enough
) - it's a great help.
