But if you’re unfamiliar you can try requesting for a vector for assistance.
They can’t give vectors unless
Also IME most/all units will absolutely refuse to give vectors to VFR traffic. Some seem to do it on principle, to make the point that as a pilot you should know where you are visually. I’ve had that in France, Spain and Italy.
Also, IME, you won’t get vectors in the UK either except in an oblique way and only when the controller really wants you somewhere for separation.
I think the biggest problem with VRPs is this:
Normally, most ATCOs are really great and do all they can to help you. But if you get one who doesn’t want to help, or there is more traffic than he/she can handle, the VRP system enables them to either make a point (“you should know how to navigate”) or simply postpone the point at which he/she needs to give you attention again. It is like the UK practice of sending a pilot to the overhead join. You end up orbiting up there, 2000ft AAL, until they get around to you, which in theory could (legitimately) be never.
OCAS, there should not be any reason to care where you are. In CAS, most units in Europe have radar (the UK is probably Europe’s biggest exception, because NATS charge about 100k/year for the radar feed) so why use VRPs?
Many VRPs are really hard to find.
Also, the system does not acknowledge the legal VFR minima. Today, you can be legally VFR in 1500m. Before recently, it was 3000m. Both of these are no good for seeing VRPs unless you already know the area.
Its difficult to follow vectors if the aircraft has no DG! I’ve had controllers give headings when VFR, and if aviating in said unequipped conveyance I say “unable, VFR” or something like that. 
Usually talking on the radio adds little utility to my operations.
Re VRPs, the interaction between controller and pilot isn’t at its best when viewed by either party as an exercise in one-upmanship. If the guy isn’t familiar with the VRP, so what, say it another way.
With practise you can follow vectors with no DG and just a wet compass. When I lived in Houston, I used to do it all the time our Cessna 140 (which had no DG). You might not be accurate to the degree but it never seemed to bother Houston Approach.
OCAS, there should not be any reason to care where you are.
Hm. Except when one is not supposed to enter CAS, and especially when surrounded by such on all sides… Being OCAS is not a problem, indeed, but remaining OCAS can be; especially in crowded airspace like my dear own. For one solid challenge, look at the VFR map slightly NNW of Mechelen – a very tight corridor between the CTR’s of EBAW and EBBR, and the EBBR TMA on top, up from 1500 AMSL ; making it a 3-dimensional challenge.
Many VRPs are really hard to find.
Allow me to disagree, but with a double proviso:
1) round here
2) if one knows what to look for
most are impossible to miss. I don’t know what things are like elsewhere of course, and unfortunately the “what to look for” is not always very clearly documented. For one example, I remember a couple of UK pilots discussing their route home from the mid-August EBDT rally, and deciding to avoid the Whiskey VRP because it was so vague. In practical reality, Whiskey is quite impossible to overlook, it corresponds to a couple of wind turbines in the middle of the A12 motorway just before it plunges into its tunnel under the river Rupel and the parallel canal… but I do not think that is formally documented anywhere.
All VRP’s that I have seen mentioned in Belgium correspond to quite unmistakeable landscape elements, such as a motorway junction or exit, or a junction of canals or railways, but sometimes one has to be in the know.
VRPs are normally quite obvious – they are set up when the airspace is defined and following consultation with airport users.
If it’s not clear they will use something else.
It is like the UK practice of sending a pilot to the overhead join. You end up orbiting up there, 2000ft AAL, until they get around to you, which in theory could (legitimately) be never.
Nobody does that except for one ATC unit on the south coast of the UK who used to put ALL their visual inbound traffic there at the same height without giving them any traffic information on who’s nearby.
Due to the number of near misses, mid-air collisions and ATC overloads, it has been reported to the CAA and since then they’ve stopped that dangerious mal-practice by establishing VRPs.
Nobody does that except for one ATC unit on the south coast of the UK who used to put ALL their visual inbound traffic there at the same height without giving them any traffic information on who’s nearby.
Due to the number of near misses, mid-air collisions and ATC overloads, it has been reported to the CAA and since then they’ve stopped that dangerious mal-practice by establishing VRPs.
I wonder who that was. It can’t be Shoreham because I have been based there for 12 years. Shoreham has had a couple of mid-airs however. I don’t recall the earlier one but the later one was essentially caused by somebody climbing a high perf type too fast after departure, arriving at the crosswind join point at the runway end! Also Shoreham has had VRPs for ever. And they rarely use the OHJ; it gets used only on ultra busy days when the circuit cannot contain any more traffic.
Just guessing, but I bet that near-miss at Shoreham happened outside ATC hours when the communication-inhibiting A/G service was active…. IMHO AFIS and A/G should be banned
Nowadays Shoreham is ATC only. There was a rather convenient concession which ended several years ago, when there was a 1hr slot before the normal opening time when you could depart and you got a Radio service only. Reportedly some residents abused it so it was removed.
However, any kind of traffic info from a non radar unit is completely meaningless. All they can give you is the few known aircraft in the area. The other 50 won’t be known to them.
Especially when you get so much non transponding traffic. On the flight LDLO-EGKA on Monday, we say just about nobody on the route, till we got near Shoreham, when we got very close to a Cessna which showed up as Mode A only on TCAS. Now…. how many people really have a Mode A transponder? Much more likely it is Mode C set for Mode A, out of ignorance, or to make it less likely to get done for busting CAS from underneath. I see a lot of Mode A aircraft in the south east UK – probably 50% of transponding aircraft.
I don’t see the point in AFIS or A/G either especially since a lot of them seem to want to be quasi-ATC (and it’s not helped by pilots treating them as ATC – we often get people coming into our field “requesting” stuff on our frequency, we’re not ATC, all we can say is “at your discretion”. Simply self announce, keep a lookout and fly the circuit. We even had one microlight instructor give us a real chewing out for not operating a continuous radio service. All he had to do is look out of the window in that particular instance to see what was happening on the ground, it’s not rocket science. Of course it would have helped if instead of flying Airbus sized circuits he kept close enough to the airfield to see what was going on (he flew downwind and base legs well over a mile from the actual runway!)
The US system of it’s either ATC or uncontrolled I found worked very well. That way there’s no uncertainty, and you don’t get pilots thinking that some guy on the ground with an Icom radio is somehow keeping them separated from other traffic.
Certainly in the UK some ATCs will use unofficial VRPs, if that’s not an oxymoron.
