Thrust's a must,
The pads probably grew over time - but the one at Yeovs was definitely smaller than those that were at Cott/Witt by the time I got there. I had no dramas landing in any direction at Cott/Witt but would only go to the Yeovilton MEXE if I knew I'd be facing the concrete, not the grass. Probably yet another of my weaknesses and inabilities that I managed to cover up over the years!
As regards the technique Pook talked about in his book it sounds eminently sensible to me - I took it to mean maintaining an angle from head to a single fixed point as opposed to maintaining your horizontal position by virtue of being at the confluence of two straight lines - maintained by aligning two markers on each. (He probably explained it far better in 1/10th of the verbage!)