I don't disagree with anything here, and I accept whatever blame or criticism people have said.

I think it's always a little tricky when discussing things like this online - no one was there but me, and maybe my explanation was perfect, or maybe it was a misrepresentation of what actually happened.

A soloed pilot showed up at our club. He seemed a little nervous, so I tried to offer some comfort. He was nervous about taking off with the plane veering to the right and people standing on the flight line along the right side of the strip. He asked that I take the plane off for him, and said he would be fine once the plane was in the sky. I can relate to that from my training days, and I imagined that it was the same for most people - taking off and landing is what most people consider the two hardest parts.

He attempted to take off a few times with me standing next to him. He was able to smoothly accelerate the plane and keep it in the middle of the runway, right up until take off speed when the plane started to pull right, and he would try to correct left and kill the throttle. He was very, very close to having the plane in the sky on his own.

The pilot announced to the other pilot and bystanders who were near the strip that I would be taking the plane off for him and handing over the controls. I was not under the impression he would need help touring around in the sky - he never said anything like that, and I can't imagine a trainer would give someone a solo who could not make one circle in the sky with an airplane.

I took the plane up, trimmed it out, gave it an appropriate altitude and velocity vector, and handed him the controls. He seemed to be in control but letting the plane get pretty far away. I thought he was losing altitude so he could see the plane better; it was fairly gradual and steady.  I advised him to bring the plane in closer and to pull up, which confused him. He attempted to do both, but apparently pushed the elevator rather than pushed it. A witness later described the plane as flying level and maintaining altitude, then suddenly nose diving to the ground. It was not clear to me that he was not able to recover the plane until the final few seconds which seemed to happen very quickly.

I don't really know why I'm recapping, but I do know that I will be much more careful about helping other pilots with their planes in the sky. I can not afford to replace this plane (actually just the fuse needs to be replaced, and while I accept blame I don't think that replacing the fuse is my responsibility) but you can be sure as sugar that I will do more than what I think is fair in the way of assisting this pilot get back in the air, short of flying his plane again.

As I said before I brought this up with our club president (who's one of our instructors) and I will do everything I can to see that we have a proper certification process for giving pilots their solo. This man should not have gotten his solo. He was incapable of operating an aircraft, including in the sky, which he did not make clear to me, and which never became clear until the end of the flight.