Robert M. Gary wrote:

"VALID FOR STUDENT PILOT PURPOSES ONLY."

This guy is a commercial/CFI like the rest of us. I've never seen this
before. Is this a "solo" only medical??

-Robert, CFI


when you have a medical condition that prevents you from getting
a medical right away but requires a SODA, your initial certificate
does bear that mention; it allows you to do all of your training
just like any other student, including solo; unlike what someone
else mentioned in this thread it doesn't require you to do the
checkride with a FAA inspector; the way it usually works is that
by the time you get ready for the checkride, you schedule an
appointment with one of the inspector of the local FSDO for a
'medical flight check'; not a checkride per se, the inspector
just wants to see if you can operate the aircraft safely and does
not go through the PTS (said inspector is briefed by the FAA beforehand
about what needs to be checked, each person and condition
being different; in my case, partial paralysis of my legs, the
guy wanted to see how I'd handle the rudders (I eventually did two
such medical flight checks, since the SODA I got the first time was
valid for class-III only; I went through the same process to upgrade
to a class-II; I'll go for another flight check when upgrading to a
class-I eventually -- then I should be done :-) as in my case the
medical condition is not evolutive and the SODA was issued without
expiration date or requirement for recheck which is also possible);
someone with, say, a prosthetic arm would be checked differently, etc.

really a neat way of doing it; when I did my PPL(A) in England, it
was far more complicated: no solo allowed during the training... i.e.,
all the solo requirements were done with an instructor (yeah... weird),
and logged as P u/s (pilot under supervision); then, after the
checkride was passed, I had to redo the solo requirements for real
this time, before being allowed to carry passengers; a bit more
cumbersome than the FAA approach (but then again the British CAA was
one of the very rare European civil aviation authorities that would
even consider giving me a chance to demonstrate what I could do).

now, I suppose (not sure about this one, just guessing) that if
you acquire the medical condition requiring a SODA while you
already have a pilot certificate that you might end up -- after a
fair bit of paper work -- with the same restriction on your
certificate until you get the SODA (via a medical flight check);
that's how I would explain what you saw.

--Sylvain