I agree with Pjtg0707. I've seen too many people who claim to have soloed, but tend to crash a lot and not only that, scare the devil out of everyone on the field when the alleged "solo" pilot flies (read: constantly avoiding crashing). I watch their fingers on the sticks constantly dancing around like they were mixing a pancake batter. They sometimes successfully take off and sometimes successfully land without crashing.

They never seem to get any better, but still claim to be "solo" pilots. Some took several years to get this point, but still praise their instructors for doing such a good job of bringing them to solo status. Much too often when these solo pilots come to the field, no one else flies and more often than not, we try to find some place safe to hide.

Still can't understand why their instructors never seem to teach their students NOT to bang the sticks around. I've seen fliers with many years of flying under their belts still constantly banging the sticks around and unnesessarily working the tails off flying their
planes. To make matters worse, when they instruct, they seem to think that it's necessary to teach their students to do the same thing. Oh well.

nascarjoe