Originally Posted by
msoultan
So if someone does a long-distance trip, do you get handed off from a tower to TRACON to center to TRACON to tower? I'm doing heli so everything's been short
Normally, yes.
Medium and large airports (and some large metro areas like SOCAL) have TRACONS. Smaller airports don't so you go from tower to center to tower.
In SOCAL, because of the large area covered, you might stay with SOCAL the whole time at lower altitudes (below the flight levels) if your destination and departure are both in SOCAL. This is called Tower Enroute Control (TEC), and is used only in a few large TRACONs. If you look in the AFD, there is a list of "canned" IFR routes for use with TEC.
Do you have an instrument rating? If you do, and you earned it in SOCAL, your instructor should have taught you this stuff...