To those stating remain in contact, I flew (VFR) over the channel on Monday (from EBOS coasting down to LFAC and then across to DVR, stayed in contact with Lille Info then Manston Radar, not a problem. However where I had a slight problem was flying back yesterday where I decided to depart from Cambridge more or less direct over the North Sea to Middelburg; I was handed off to London Info once I'd just overflown the coast but after around 15 minutes, London Info became relatively silent - apart from the odd plane sending a report crossing the channel or similar, to which I heard no reply.
Obviously I was now out of range for the controller (and on Dutch Mil, which I'd put on box 2, was also an eery silence). I was thinking about this thread hoping there wouldn't be an additional comment added stating "another one went down en route from Cambridge to Middelburg", put 121.5 on the flip-flop and hoped for the best. About 10 minutes later I finally started receiving Dutch Mil.
So basically there are areas out over the North Sea where you won't necessarily be able to contact any ground based controllers and depending on the altitude of the unfortunate pilot, maybe he was just too low, trying to run low cloud or similar and sent out a Mayday which wasn't received anywhere, after all, if his Mayday stepped on someone who was also transmitting, then all that listeners would have heard was a squeal.....