Problem with requiring a flight plan - if Target A is 2 hours away, and I file a flight plan for Airport B 4 hours away.. plenty of time to be going the "wrong" way.

I was talking about VFR flight plans. See, if I say I'm gonna be here at time X and I don't show, then I can be subject to penalties, suspension, etc.

Check out what it takes to cross a ADIZ - that's really what you're talking about. I think you have to give them +- 10 minutes when you'll hit it - and you'd BETTER be right. Else you get to be escorted by armed fighters.

Now, if I've got my transponder on they could tell when I'm more than 5 miles off course if they were following me. Could be wrong but currently I think you have to request VFR flight following and its at their option.

Radar Advisories (Flight Following) is as workload permits (as you said). Big advantage to being under Flight Following is you're already in contact/cleared into D/C/B airspace if you're under it. But they don't always give advisories, I've had a couple planes near me, RDU didn't say anything.

But if flight plans became mandatory along with transponders, (and, admittedly a hell of a lot more technology than exists today), then they could tell when I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.

Yeah, but then they'd be more like IFR flight plans. I don't see that happening, not when Sport Pilot Certs are on the horizon.

That's not an opinion shared by the half dozen or so old CFI's that hang around my airport. Being a newbie, maybe I'm under their influence too heavily ;-)

They might not be wrong, but its not my impression. Especially GA out of uncontrolled airports. Nothing in GA had anything to do with this. Further, GA will get pushed more and more as the latest security craze makes it harder to get onto the plane, and people migrate to fractionals/own planes/owned planes.

(I don't mind things being harder. I mind them being MINDLESSLY harder.)

Addison