Do you give random transponder codes?

[Jesse James]

When doing the departure clearance for the airport you are controlling, for the squawk code, do you just give a random set of numbers or is it determined by something?

[Lars Bergmann]

It is determined by something. That something can be various things depending on where you are controlling.

[Dustin Rider]

In the US, transponder codes for IFR flight plans are automatically assigned by vNAS in accordance with the NBCAP. Translation: squawk codes are allocated to different facilities in the National Airspace System based on a nation-wide beacon allocation plan that was created to avoid as many duplicate codes as possible. Considering there may be thousands of flights in the air at any one time and only so many discrete transponder codes available, this really helps cut down on extraneous re-assignments of beacon codes from ARTCC to ARTCC. For VFR aircraft, each facility is issued a small subset of codes that may be used for VFR flight following or for pop-up IFR aircraft who have not pre-filed.

tl; dr
Please don't assign random transponder codes to aircraft in the air or on the ground as it could cause issues down the line.

[Alistair Thomson]

1 hour ago, Dustin Rider said:

Please don't assign random transponder codes to aircraft in the air or on the ground as it could cause issues down the line

I'm sure that our OP outlaw hero (OK, maybe I read too many cowboy books when I was a kid:) wasn't intending to do that!