VFR Flight Following frequencies?

[Perk]

Allright, so I'm a little confused about requesting VFR flight following. The various guides seem to all say contact approach to request flight following, but sometimes it's not always clear which approach frequency to contact. Say I'm taking off out of Palm Springs. The nearest contact box (for the RIV class C) on the Sectional says to contact Socal approach on 134.0. The PSP airport directory lists 126.7 as approach/departure frequency. The enroute chart also lists Los Angeles Center (Twenty Nine Palms) nearby on 128.15. So does it really matter who I call for flight following assuming all the antennas are in range? Is it better to use the class C contact frequency if I'm intending to fly into that class C, or use the departure airport frequency and expect a handoff?

Thanks!

[Keith Smith]

The simplest method would be to coordinate flight following prior to taking off from PSP. Just add, "request advisories to [destination] at [altitude]" with your initial taxi request. This will be relatively fool proof at any Bravo, Charlie or TRSA airport, and most of the Deltas, too. There's a relatively small number of Deltas where, in the real world, they don't have a convenient method to put you in the system, and as such, they'll reject your initial request but WILL give you a frequency to cold call the departure controller for flight following.

Now, if you're in the air already (let's say you departed from a nearby non-towered airport), you would contact the nearest approach or center facility. If you're considerably closer to PSP than you are to RIV, then calling the PSP approach frequency would make more sense. Yes, they'll hand you off to Socal or March approach as you get closer to RIV.