Dear ConeyIsland,
I understand that you are sure of how unsuitable I am for the job you so easily trained for, however, I assure you, none of the instructors voiced any concerns over my progress, training or demonstrated controlling techniques leading up to the exam. I predominantly had 2 different instructors sitting with me throughout the runs and their feedback was generally, busy run handled well, main criticism was about ensuring coord and coms with other agencies was not in any way unclear or ambiguous.
There was, however, one run which was supervised by an instructor who, to put it carefully, has quite a say in a trainee's progress. This particular instructor was very involved in the development of the Combined Ops unit and was clearly very proud of the conflicts in the runs. Having trumped the 'sting in the tail' that this particular controller constantly talked about by proving two tracks to be longitudinal, and then stating that (given the time at the crossing point was 9 minutes) I should be able to get a distance standard either by RNAV or GPS. He then told me I can't do that because the trail aircraft was not going through a common waypoint (one was on ADSB flex track). I then stated that the lead aircraft was tracking from blah blah and that, as they were not yet past their crossing point I could use blah blah as the reference point. I was told I couldn't do that because it's too complicated. I then begrudgingly moved on to what the instructor was obviously wanting me to do and decided to climb one aircraft over the other with a requirement. I displayed both aircraft's routes and measured a waypoint well outside the area of conflict (as we were told we could do by the other instructors supervising the unit) to be 51 NM from the ADSB aircraft's route. I then used the trail aircraft's time (which was PETO'd) at the waypoint, subtracted 5 minutes and stated the requirement to be "reach FL380 by time 12". The instructor then said I had no idea what I was doing, stopped the run and proceeded to tell me that I was 'pulling numbers out of nowhere' and attempting to use standards incorrectly. The instructors opinion of my abilities at this point in the training was clearly not favourable. Given that I was simply doing as others had instructed and allowed I felt rather frustrated and annoyed by the whole situation.
Now this is just one run in a whole unit so normally this wouldn't be an issue. However, as I said, this particular instructor swings a heavy hammer and low and behold, who turns up on my right shoulder for the exam?
My point is, too subjective. The rest of this story is lengthy and I feel I have probably given away too much already (if the rumours of ASA trawlers on here are true) so I will leave it there.