Rick
The setup here in the UK is different. We don't have flight following in the way the US does and the guys at Scottish & London Info don't have radar (London has visibility of a display about 6 feet away but the FISOs are not licensed to use it for control purposes, not sure about the Scottish setup?) , they don't allocate discrete squawks so therefore they never have you identified or know where you actually are.
Forgive me if I am telling you something you already know but another difference over here is we have a dedicated unit of ATCOs that cover the whole of the UK and their sole job is to handle emergency traffic on 121.5 and 243.0. They have primacy on the emergency freqs and it would be them (D&D) that would answer all calls on the freqs not ATSUs that happen to be monitoring as part of their spare capacity. The D&D cell has all sorts of kit to assist them that normal ATSUs don't have access to.
Moli
Last edited by Moli; 27th Jul 2013 at 08:10.