I have 2 dogs....I have 2 leads for them. These have a plastic case containing a reel of~ 8 metres of thin cord lead, the distal end of which is clipped to the dog's collar.....so, you see, the dog can happily run across the road and play with the traffic or pretend to be a greyhound racing the neighbour's cat...... (i'm a bit slow on the lock-button that tends to abruptly curb these canine impulses
) But, I'm supervising them, aren't I?
Soloing students have no -such constraints. Their instructor can pre-brief the flight and off Studie goes. What they
actually do, against what they were
supposed to do, is down to a track-recording GPS, ATC and trust. Yep. It's largely a farce.
(Heard of a long-overdue Flex stude who didn't respond to the radio. returning Police Helicopter crew, asked if they'd seen such an aircraft, said "red one?" "yep"
"Ah, that might be the one hanging from the HT overhead pylons at XXX"
Subsequent replaying of the GPS showed a string of misdemeanours, aircraft written-off." training " finished! )
Supervised Solo appears, therefore, to be a farce, just like a dog with no lead(one of mine learned to chew through his, returned a half hour later, tired, happy and stinking of fox-crap
)
As long as I've had an interest in GA, it's been the case that, without the piece of paper , you could only fly solo, under an instructor's authority. Strikes me as an onerous position to be in, as the poor fellow (or lady) has absolutely no control over what the authorised pilot who's just "passed" actually gets up to....they can only be reactive, even if equipped with a tracker, x-ray, long distance vision , and an A-Gradio that's on and being listened to.....The "pink-slip" equivalent is long overdue!
Incidentally, My instructor would not allow me to drive back from my successful test, as his insurance (he said!) only covered learners or qualified instructors, not newly- qualified drivers!