SNS3 - nobody is saying one should not be meeting those standards or being checked out.
The CAA say 12 hours in the past year, plus one hour with a FI for SEP renewal in the UK, or renew by test. What is being said is it should be 30 hrs or some other made-up amount. Why not just say if one isn't a commercial pilot doing a 1000hrs per year one shouldn't be doing it?
I tend not to eek my flying out but rather get in as much as I can when I can afford to. I checked out as club current in 30 minutes after a 15 month break, but went on to revise just about every aspect of the PPL before renewing by test, which I passed easily. Who could fly the PPL skills test after such a break someone asked? Well actually apart from the shorter nav and no 'diversion' the test was pretty much the same as the skills test and was just a lot of fun really after doing 3 hours of revision flights first.
As it is the few hours I have got in the past couple of years include Night Qualification, tailwheel conversion and plenty of revision with FIs, my own view is when I've not flown for ages and pass a club checkout it says no more then at 'solo' standard - I plan my next flight accordingly.
The CAA say though that if I have done 3 landings as sole manipulator of the controls, in the past 90 days, I'm also passenger current too and therefore can exercise the rights of my licence - to be branded as dangerous for not doing 30 hours per year doesn't really fit.
How do I now for example do the 30 hrs this year? Should I do them all with an instructor because I won't possibly be able to fly on my own or with friends and rebuild my skill set?
I wouldn't argue that doing more hours in a year wouldn't be more ideal, I would love to do thousands, but to brand anyone sub 30 or 25 hrs/year as unsafe and needing to rethink if they should be flying is simply not inline with requirements of the CAA nor reasonable.
One could fly for 1hr per month, be totally club current, passenger current and meet the 12 hour rule. To believe someone flying twice that TIME is immediately much safer to me seems like a much bigger trap than the 12hr pilot who knows they are going to be somewhat limited. Someone could have done 24hrs via longer enroute legs and done exactly the same amount of landings and take-offs as the 12hr pilot, it's meaningless.
In the same way I do fly circuits often when I'm current, you can bet I have far more landings and take-offs than some of my friends in the past week than they had in the past 4 months
So the fact they sat cruising for longer to get their burger makes them more current?
