Here, FIDO...

A leisurely evening's lesson with John out over the hills on a filed flight plan to Stockton (KSCK) in 05D, a couple of times around the ILS 29R there, then over to Tracy (KTCY) for the VOR-A with the missed, then back to Oakland for the ILS 27R. A bit of holding and airwork, a bit of actual, a bit of partial panel, and a lot of fun. This time, everything seems to come together just fine, and apart from some sloppy flying here and there, I fly well, ahead of the plane and instruments pretty much the entire time. I even get the hold at TRACY intersection on the missed after the VOR-A approach right this time; unlike the first time, instead of obsessing about intersecting the SAC-157 radial (which didn't come unflagged, let alone alive, until too late), I just concentrated on getting to TRACY By Any Means Necessary -- DME, the ECA-229 radial, and a bit of pig-headed determination.

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John talked to Ben today and they both think I'm making way too much of Tuesday's stage check problems -- Ben was overall fairly OK with my, erm, work, and told John I'd actually been dealt a pretty bad hand by ATC both times at Concord, and that while I could have coped better with that, without it things were reasonable. (Ben told John he'd watched amazed as -- while I made a bunch of wild twists on the OBS during the DME arc and seemed to be winging it and making it up as I went along -- I just kept determinedly steering the plane around the DME arc mostly well within the half mile tolerance and keeping within a few feet of assigned altitude, almost in spite of the damn OBS or any other damn instrument Ben suspected I was using).

John says I should take the FIDO principle to heart -- just F* It and Drive On. Just put it behind you. A more profane version of Ben's observations (on Tuesday and during aerobatics lessons earlier this year) that I let these things get me down way too bloody much. Good advice. I should also probably stop expecting my flying to be the best of all possible flying -- a deadly form of arrogance...

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The first time around the ILS at Stockton there's a strong smell of burnt jet fuel around the outer marker. There's no sign of any jet landing ahead of us (Stockton has a lot of turbine freight operations), so it's not clear where it came from (it wasn't there the second time around). Just one of those mysteries...