It’s easy with experience to point out the folly of setting off around complex airspace, without skydemon / garmin pilot, etc.
However, if you’re just a fresh PPL and you’ve been taught DR as the way to do things, it may not be blatantly obvious to use gps. It might fail, it might give me wrong positions, I should stick with what I know, etc, etc.
I would bet most students who got busted give up their PPL training. They will have realised that it is really hard to enjoy flying at this level. This is despite that the CAA doesn’t “gasco them”. The student will still get a dirty mark on his CAA file.
Of course we will never find out the numbers.
I agree.
Flying outside of the ATPL path is supposed to be fun.
It’s a fine balance between
a) the stress experienced and related to achievements, which can be part of the ‘sense of self achievement’ process.
and
b) the stress which is a step too far, thus killing all the fun completely.
@Off_Field I read the report as the flight being a solo student, not a newly-minted PPL?
That being the case, the question of whether the flight as planned (without a moving map) was a good idea might be directed to the instructor?
In any case what you say about “it might fail” is relevant because it is typical of attitudes that prevail in GA and that the CAA promoted for many years. It’s an attitude that shows a completely inability to deal sensibly with comparative risks – because it’s blindingly obvious that the likelihood of any of those risks of “over reliance on GPS”, as they like to call it, causing you a problem is far, far smaller than that of you cocking up your dead reckoning.
Peter wrote:
I would bet most students who got busted give up their PPL training.
The saddest thing of all is that, from a purely financial and safety-conscious point of view (meaning bureaucratic safety of your licence etc.), the most efficient thing to do is to depart your local airport and stay in the overhead flying in circles, doing nothing, talking to nobody and then landing. Over and over again. This is what LOTS of time builders were doing when I did my PPL. Essentially they wanted the cheapest and fasted way to build 100 hours, and that’s what they did.
To me that’s a waste of time. If you need to spend the money and fly the hours, at least make something interesting of those hours! Go places and have some fun on the way! Unfortunately these stories of severe punishment for minor infringements encourage student pilots to do just that; keep as low a profile as possible.
Graham wrote:
@Off_Field I read the report as the flight being a solo student, not a newly-minted PPL?
Actually I was looking for a very similar report of a newly-minted PPL(H) pilot who busted the Birmingham CTR while following the M40 Northbound.
In this instance, the folding of the chart played a role.
This is by the way another topic/issue I have with the UK VFR chart. I very much like the format, the information contained, but the “hardware” is terrible. You need to unfold and refold the bloody thing for each and every flight. In the end so many folds make the chart unreadable/unusable on some places. It’s just a hassle to work with in the tiny cockpit environment of the typical SEP trainer. Why are these things made as rolls instead of actual folded charts? It seems like these are designed for use in PLANNING environments, hanged from a wall, roled out on a huge planning desk etc. but NOT for use while AIRBORNE.
I can’t seem to find it right now…
It’s a fine balance between
a) the stress experienced and related to achievements, which can be part of the ‘sense of self achievement’ process.
The problem is that during the PPL training you are getting zero, zilch, absolutely -273.16C of “achievement”. Going solo is perhaps an achievement but you don’t get a glimpse of the real value of flying: going to nice places, meeting up with other people, etc. It is just hard work… and then the CAA busts you for making a mistake in an almost completely unworkable navigation technique which you have been taught.
might be directed to the instructor?
Yes, but he has a statutory defence 
known as The Syllabus
Like me smashing up yet another wheel on my car because the council didn’t fill in a huge pothole; their statutory defence to my ~£500 claim being that “nobody told them about it”
the folding of the chart played a role.
When I was doing a bit of ground school for my FAA to JAA IR conversion (not mandatory but I thought it might be useful; I was wrong) one of the instructors (an ATPL ground exam guy) proudly told of an amazing map printing machine developed during his RAF career which would generate a single fanfold chart for any route anywhere, even UK to Australia, so the pilot didn’t have to change charts. You know, this is the sort of thing which made GREAT BRITAIN such a great country, with an Empire on which the sun never set, and it is a big mistake to think the answer lies in ditching these historical lessons and moving to new untested stuff, like C, GPS, Windows 3.1.
PPL instructors are of course acutely aware of this, which is why they never fly past any crease on their chart
Graham wrote:
@Off_Field I read the report as the flight being a solo student, not a newly-minted PPL?That being the case, the question of whether the flight as planned (without a moving map) was a good idea might be directed to the instructor?
Yes, you are right on that, I had mixed it up with another report which was quite similar from a just qualified ppl h.
It really comes down to how instruction is done / viewed. The argument is that you should be able to do everything map, compass stopwatch and looking out the window. We know the reality is different in and around complex airspace. I’d rather people were taught to fly and taught to fly in the environment they are in / likely to be in, it seems more useful to me. I do recognise it’s difficult to teach map reading and moving map at a similar time. Anyone with a reasonable bit of thinking will see how clearly superior GPS is and won’t pay much attention to the former.
I can easily forgive new pilots for not knowing any better because it’s all they’ve been told and know. Sources like the internet and these forums provide a tremendous wealth of information for the keen pilot looking to learn more. But there will be a great deal of people who just go through the school system then do their own thing and don’t read around.
I agree with Peter that this sort of bust could easily cause a fresh ppl to hang up their headset. Flying is a pleasure, but the barriers put up to make it more difficult do mean only the strongest of will persevere.
More lip service is being paid to “just culture” in CAP2146 which refers to this (search for just culture), without mentioning that the gentleman in charge has been totally disregarding any such idea but remains in his job, well protected as being a member of the ex RAF club in the CAA, and no doubt with “enhanced protection” since recent CAA management changes, and this is despite a torrent of complaints over the past year or two.
Clearly, nothing is ever going to change. Not for the next few years, at least.
Same disingenuous garbage about “just culture”.
Notable points are:
The expiry period for a conviction (this is the infringements committee “kangaroo court” conviction, not a normal court conviction ) is 2 years; previously this was disclosed under FOIA
The gasco “course” is now half a day and is over Zoom
Gasco lost the “safety evenings” contract with the CAA and it would be surprising if the “charity” is able to stay afloat on this alone, particularly with the numbers sentenced to gasco having been substantially reduced since the good old days when the CAA chap would top-slice around 20/month from the infringement total and send those to gasco There is no doubt that improvement is the result of EuroGA publicity, because the topic was killed by admins elsewhere.
They are setting up “local infringment teams” (LAITs) – with just 1300/year UK total on a good flying year (compared to say Prague TMA alone getting ~4000/year) these esteemed bodies are not going to be overly busy, but are sure to be excellent lunch opportunities
