Tze How and I went for preflight brief by MAJ Ralph, it was good, he just made it short and sweet. Tze How was taking his test and me just sortie 13, and we also wished MAJ Ralph for his birthday. He was quite surprised and asked us how we knew it, somehow we didn't reply that question, I don't know why too.
Ops Brief by Chee Wee, nicely done. We also presented the cake COL Kao bought for him, lighting candles and the song. As soon as it was over, the 1st wave guys left. I was having the usual preflight anxiety, this time more as I was told of the stories of flying with MAJ Ralph.
I strapped in pretty quickly, to the extent he was still outside when I'm all done. The oil temperature played tricks on me today again, other than that, the departure was smooth. I did the sortie profile and the aerobatics at the end. He also taught me on refining my barrel roll, which I felt I learnt alot. I tried one on my own, and I managed it with some decency. At least I still had my initial and final visual reference still ahead of me.
During recovery, when I was about the make the 'inbound duri gap' R/T call, the others were already on their way back, way past the location I was. Turned out that I was last to ramp in, oh well, what's new. I heard and experienced for myself MAJ Ralph's way of taxi. Initially he was having control and bending his head down, writing away on a notepad on his lap, without looking ahead. But he could still maintain the direction, even though the rudders were pretty screwed up, the left side was too unresponsive. Pretty frightening.
All I can say all the things I heard about him seemed to be not true. He's a great instructor, I just feel that as long as you're fine, he won't turn you upside down. I had a pleasant and enriching flight with him, his mood was very good too, could it be the fact that it was his birthday? For all I know, I'm glad.
The new course of 10/05 also arrived today, whom Zhimei smsed last night telling me that she saw them in the airport. Well having them here was a major morale boost to us, especially after learning of the unsuccessful attempt of the Sup check by Chong Pei. I saw many of my FeP friends, Andy, CS Koo and Raymond, really glad.
Congrats to Tze How and Vincent who cleared the phase 2, who were also very irritating because they really let their hair down, which distracts some people who were going to take the test tomorrow. So the rest of us were like giving them the cold treatment. I ran through mental flying once and just chilled out upstairs with the rest of my course mates. Slept early after two draining days, I wish I could pray or something for my test tomorrow, guess my luck could still hold on.
10:30 pm;