Crash and the others who think that vince should hang up his helmet.
Its all very well with hindsight going on about all these options which he should have thought about.
He proberly spent a couple of days off and on looking at the route picking out the one which he would enjoy the most. Its a big trip, exciting, proberly bored his wife with it endlessly. Pissed off every instructor he came contact with asking there opinion
Kingsmure (or any other parachuting site) to most low hour guys would be a no no because of parachuting there, instructors batter into students to stay away from these sites with dire warnings of meat bombs passing close to wings and MOR's being filed.
He made a plan went over it with an Instructor who had to pass comment on an area outside there own. I must admit I have been asked to do the same for a PPL flying down to Biggin. I helped him up to Cambridge then told him to ask on PPrune because I have no experence flying VFR in the London area.
There are numerous sub optimal planned flights by low houred pilots carried out in the UK every year (and a few by experence commercial pilots). If you ask in any radar room in the UK they will be able to list out many a grey hair provocking experence.
Vince's only major crime is the fact that his bag of luck ran out and it made the newspapers. There have been numerous cockups of a far more dubious nature in scotland which haven't provoked such a bitter hang the bastard responce.
As I said before I predict that there will be some technical factors to do with operating that engine/aircraft and some human factors which with hind sight could have been negated.
The Captancy and SA required to think about all the options mentioned in a unfamilar area is not there in a pilots first two hundred never mind one hundred hours. I suspect that the fife/tayside boys and girls would have just as much issues if they were taken out of there comfort zone up into the Highlands or south into Warton/Liverpool area.