Asking for flight following

[cybercrypt13]

I am sitting at airport ready to taxi. I'm leaving to the east and would like VFR flight following. Do I ask the tower for this before I start taxing or is this something I need to do once I get up and away from the airport?

Call should be something to the effect: Tower Twin Cessna 39B north of tower at tie downs with information Charlie. Ready for taxi for East departure and would like flight following...

Assuming this is even correct, would you also tell him where you were going? Sorry for the dumb questions but been a seriously long time since I've spoken to anyone and trying to get my head around it all.

[Kevin_atc]

IMO, it's easier all around to ask for Flight Following from the ground controller when you make your initial call up. This way, you can get your squawk code on the ground and you don't have to waste TRACON's time going through the whole call up, squawk, ident, etc...

I think I speak for most of the controllers when I say we'd prefer you to request it from the ground controller prior to taxi/takeoff, but it's 100% legal either way.

Your example looks good. Two things you should also provide are a destination (if you have one) and a requested VFR cruise altitude.

[julio.elizalde]

I can offer a slightly different real world flying perspective. Usually, when you're on the ground, you're talking to people while the engine is on. If the engine is on, you're paying for that time. While you can ask ground for your request, you can also just take off, have the tower give you traffic advisories as you leave your local airpsace and then call up the approach controller with your VFR request. This is what I do in my own flying but I can see it going either way. I'd just prefer to spend my time making that request while my plane is in the air instead of wasting money sitting on the ground. At least the view is better in the former!

On the other hand, if you are flying into very congested airspace, say out of Van Nuys or the class D's outside of LAX, it would be less stress to have that coordination taken care of on the ground to avoid mishaps once airborne. It really depends on where you're departing from.

[Keith Smith]

At Bravo or Charlie fields, I coordinate the flight following with clearance in the initial request. At Deltas, I'll typically call ground for taxi and include the f/f request as part of that call, or I'll break it up and request f/f once I've started taxiing.

The VFR workshops cover this topic in fairly extensive detail, btw.

[cybercrypt13]

Thanks for the help guys.

Glenn