Post by Nick OdellThat is obviously pointless but I don't mind admitting that I (used
to, back in the days of commercial flying) pick flights with very long
connections in between. For one thing, they are generally much cheaper
than direct flights or ones with quick connections.
Although it was not a flight, my very first trip to London was when I
went for my first [1] RAF assessment centre at Biggin Hill, probably in
1962 after I had applied for a Cranwell Scholarship. I took a morning
train from Coventry to Euston, walked around central London for about 4
hours and then caught my second train to Bromley South.
[1] I failed that one and then passed the one to get the University
Scholarship [2]. That may have been because one of the tests was to use
a joystick to keep a dot in the centre of a CRT and then whenever a
light flashed you had to pull a lever back if the light was green and
push it forwards if the light was red [3]. On the earlier visit I'd
noticed that the light came on one by one down the line and if you were
at the end of the line and used your peripheral vision you could know
what colour was coming and improve your reaction time no end. Maybe that
bit of "creativity" (aka cheating) was why I wasn't such a great pilot,
but it also helped that I applied for a place as an Air Electronics
Engineer and then transferred to the Pilot branch when (briefly) at Uni
(Newcastle BSc Hons Joint degree in Maths and Physics with Chem. subsid.
- even if it hadn't been 2/3rds of both the Maths and Physics degrees
and 1/3rd of the Chemistry, it was way beyond me).
[2] I may have been another time between those two when I applied for
the ATC Flying Scholarship (which I was awarded and was why I had a PPL
around the time of my 18th birthday).
[3] A very early video game :) Another test was an irregular spiral of
contacts on a rotating shaft and you had to manoeuvre an arm with
another contact so you maintained the circuit. Very easy, except that
the free contact kept moving after you'd stopped turning the wheel that
controlled it which made it a challenge.