Preach it brother!

I'm, unfortunately, one of those "stick happy newbies" but I reign in my desire to fly until I've either got a buddy-box hooked up OR a VERY good pilot standing RIGHT next to me ready to grab! Heck, I don't even START my plane without supervision!!!
if you knew my kind of luck, you'd understand why [:@] ) even WITH a buddy-box I managed to pull of a perfect 3 point landing >> in the top of a 60' pinetree! (the dude on the other end of the cord should have been paying a LITTLE more attention and it was a pretty tree thick and short field with tall pines at each end.... the tree gnomes got me....

oh, and i sympathize about tromping through the woods; when mine went down/up(?) I picked FIVE ticks off of me and the briars tore my legs and sandaled feet to SHREDS! The only way we found the plane was that it had completely sheared the horiz. stab and it was at the base of the tree, so we looked up and there it was, sitting as pretty as it could be! It really didn't have any damage either (aside from the tail). The guy on the box was really cool about it, went out 2 days later and got it down with a LONG PVC pole, rebuilt the tail, and even replaced a servo that was going wonky; oh! and he put a new wing on it instead of using the busted one!

"YOU'RE on the box, YOU'RE responsible for the plane" was the way my good friend explained it to me (i was about to buy this plane from him THAT DAY, so "technically" it was HIS plane in the tree! I DID buy it after the crash and it's a darned good plane (a Tower 60) with just a rip in the mylar on the side as "proof" of it's ordeal )

You can't really blame the newbie though (well, you CAN, but listen to me first...); new pilots with new planes want to fly SO bad that they can't stand it! TRUST ME, I'M THERE!!!! and sometimes you THINK you can do more than you CAN at this stage. I completely agree with you, he should NOT have flown alone; that's CLEARLY a mistake I guarantee you he won't make again! But in his DESIRE to fly outran his ABILITY to fly and that's something I can sympathize with..... I don't think any here has ever NOT run into this situation, whether we chose to act on it may have been different, but I kinda feel sorry for the guy. He now knows he made a BAD mistake, he's lost his plane because of it, and he's probably half-sick with regret.

Maybe you could talk him into buying a new plane and getting HIM to build it himself (with your guidance of course; no crooked tailfeathers ) so he'll have alot more effort invested in it and won't do something like that again. Give him a good dressing down for his actions, but also encourage him to not give it up. I hate to see the sport loose any pilot b/c of DUMB rookie mistakes.... [] Who knows, this little "object lesson" may make him one of the best trainers on the field one day and he could bring dozens of new guys into the sport!