“D&D would welcome a few ‘training fixes’ at the moment if you are airborne, high enough, and have time, and doing it won’t distract you from other tasks – if you can’t remember how or what to say, see the hot news item on http://www.flyontrack.co.uk but basically you just listen out on 121.5 to see that nothing important is happening, then simply slowly say “London Centre, G—-, training fix, training fix, training fix” to give them time to find you. With a ‘training fix’ they try and locate you to within 3 nm with VHF cross cuts, and prefer it if you are not less than 2000′ in the LTMA area, and if not less than 3000′ elsewhere. They can try and locate you at lower levels but usually do not have the same accuracy and will often offer a squawk in such cases. They are checking and ‘tuning’ personnel, software and hardware and they are simply not getting enough practice calls especially with all the bad weather. If their reply is way out on position, it’s worth mentioning it to them, otherwise just thank them and say you are hanging frequency. For example they gave me a position of 3 miles north of Reading when we were about 5 miles WNW of it. Following comment, they took out a suspect receiver and asked us to try again, and identified a problem with one of their inputs.”