Finally - another step up the ladder. Finally, a bit of a glow to come home with. The lesson was good - some minor hitches, but a big leap in confidence and application.
After last week's lesson I decided that the "lapses of concentration" were due in part to inadequate sleep (about 6 hours) and a minimalist breakfast (cereal and a cuppa) and so decided that I must do with 7 hours and a cooked breakfast. In the event I got about 6 and 3/4 hours but I did manage to do the bacon, egg, tomato, beans and toast. Any lapses of concentration from now on would be down to old-fashioned fluster!
It was sometime during the flurry of activity to get Mrs. Km set up with all she needed for my absence that my mood began to change and I began to look realistically -as I thought - at the forthcoming flight. My mood got darker and I began to feel that, as close to finishing as I am, this was a make or break point. If I ended up with another, "Well that wasn't too good", or, "You really have to do something about your R/T/heading keeping/level keeping/whatever", then I would throw in the towel. When I instructed with the ATC if a cadet was deeply unimpressive enough he or she would be sent up with the Boss for 'scrub' checks, and their future decided thereby. I felt this was to be my own self-imposed scrub check.
I was feeling this as I left the house and got on with the 50-minute drive. It's good, that drive. With a busy, hectic backdrop of work, caring and general household stuff at home it can act as a shower: washing away the things that crowd in on my mind as I go to fly. Only today it wasn't working. Black thoughts followed me down Blue Bell Hill and along the M20. I turned onto the country roads that take me the fnal ten miles or so to the airfield. The conditions were good, the traffic light and..........well, let's say I enjoyed those final few miles. And those miles worked the magic. I arrived at the airfield in a good frame of mind for the lesson, although still unsure whether it was 'scrub checks', or not.
In the event, I felt positively in control, the whole time. the R/T dialogue with Biggin and Lydd was confident in both giving and receiving, level keeping was more exact and track keeping better. In fact, the whole thing was "100% better" according to Bruce.
Another step nearer sending off those forms!