FCP 4 has no trouble with TC breaks.

For those with Sony cameras (some of them anyway) and using Sony tape with the chip, the combination of the two will allow you to move to the end of the recorded section for additional recording without ever experiencing a TC break.

I always just record 10 seconds of room tone when I'm done with a segment or before I remove a tape. Then I don't lose good footage and I get a lot of room in which to reposition the tape.

The only time I stripe a tape is when I want to confirm that the tape is OK before I use it on a never-can-be-repeated shot.

Hi all.

Been on holidays ( the reason why I have'nt been here for a wile).

As Glenn sugests, I use a cleaning tape, so that rules out the dirty head issue.
I shoot weddings, wich means a lot of start and stop recording, and rewinding to get timecode is out of the question.
To sum things up:
I'll continue to stripe my out of the box blank tapes until I have the time to do some more testing (plenty of work now).

Thanks all for your help.

Best regards
Arnaldo