Did my QXC two weeks ago. It went well, but I did become a bit 'uncertain of position' on the final leg. (I knew I was somewhere over Leicestershire, but I had no idea over which bit!)
I think the primary cause was not monitoring time correctly. (I was looking for things that couldn't be there yet or had been overflown long ago)
Once I got worried about the idea of being lost, I started to a) panic and b) let the flying go to pot. I started zig-zaging around hoping to be able to relate the ground to map. Eventually it did start to make sense, and I bumbled across my final turning point. Later on I examined the map, and on the basis of the ground features I could remember, I worked out I was never more than about 3 miles off track, and had I but concentrated on Time, the MAJOR ground features, and flown the planned heading, I would have arrived at my turning point 10 minutes earlier, and with a lot more hair.
Don't forget you can use your Rad-Nav skills to assist with position fixing.
Best wishes for the next attempt.
----
One final ideal I wanted some feedback on from other PPRUNErs (sorry to hijack your thread, but this might end up being useful to you) I'm considering on my next Nav-ex (i.e. the PPL Skill Test), circling any positive position fixes on my chart and annotaing the circle with the time of the fix. This way I can decrease my circle of uncertainty by knowing exactly when my last accurate position fix was - I found that not knowing this was most frustrating when I became uncertain of position - I realised that the last time I knew where I was AT A PARTICUALR TIME was when I had just taken off from XXX. Does anyone else use this technique?
[ 04 January 2002: Message edited by: tacpot ]</p>