10 weeks and the wait was finally over. It was a slight scramble to get prepared as we barely had 2 days of notice in advance.

Yet another sleepless night plagued me and I was kept awake by restless thoughts. When I could finally fall asleep, I was dogged by a nightmare where I had to report for duty but certain items of my uniform had gone missing I was in panic mode. I woke up barely 2 hours later, drained, and more tired than when I had gone to bed.

I arrived at the airport early and when the rest of my guys had turned up, we had a quick briefing on what is to be expected out of today's training exercise. One of us had to fly out of Changi to Senai and one of us had to fly back. I had this feeling I would have to go first and we drew lots, true enough, I was number 1. A shiver of excitement ran down my spine.

There was no time to waste, everything was done quickly and methodically. Once everything done, I got clearance to start the engines. The sound of the engines spooling to life was music to my ears and when we cleared the ground crew to disconnect, I eased her gently onto the taxiway, careful not to be too jerky when steering.

We got the clearance for takeoff after a 15 minute delay, I lined up and advanced the thrust levers smoothly forward and we were off! The rush of speed and power was exhilarating! At the call to rotate, I pitched up the nose up to 15 degrees and flew the flight directors and I flew manually for the next 1 hour and 20 minutes without engaging the autopilot. It was a dream to fly.

I did an ILS approach on the way in and patches of broken cloud obscured my view, I was cleared for visual circuits at 1500ft. My rate of descent on finals was constant until about 50ft and it started to shallow when I was correcting for the centreline. I touched down and took off again, did 2 more circuits and 1 missed approach. I was happy with my performance and my landings today, which was a great relief. I changed seats with the next guy on downwind, I had completed the exercise. The other 3 guys took turns to do the same exercise and the last guy flew back to Changi and landed.

We all made it and we now put in the paperwork for the endorsement on our licenses. The happiness I felt today made me forget my pain and sadness over the past 1.5 weeks, though bittersweet. The first person I had wanted to call to share the good news is him but that will have to wait until things are resolved.

But for tonight, I think I will finally have a good night's rest.

:)