I had scheduled an instrument lesson yesterday because we were
supposed to have good instument weather today. It's early march
and we were supposed to have temperatures in the low 60s with
clouds and light rain. Oh. And wind. Lots of wind.
By the time that my lesson came around (about 4pm or so) the
clouds had moved out of our local area and there was a good bit of
blue sky. I could still see well developed clouds to the south
east, so I figured we could schedule a flight down to Martha's Vinyard and
get into some pretty good clouds. I was not disappointed.
Checking the weather, reported clouds at the vinyard were 100 feet
(!), good visibility and light rain. It sounded like a perfect
first ILS approach in real instrument conditions. There was also
a SIGMET
for severe and moderate turbulence in the area. Given the winds
outside, I could believe it. My instructor said that when he was
with the student before me that they had been bumped around pretty
good. He had kept his seatbelts tight for a reason.
Anyway, I filed, preflighted, picked up my clearance and we took
off for the vinyard. It was pretty bumpy, but not
terrible. It was just good skill-building weather under the hood.
Once we got above 4000 or so the air smoothed right out, too,
which was nice. About 30 miles or so from the vinyard we started
to encounter the clouds which meant that I got to take my hood off
and really fly in the clouds for the very first time. It's
amazing how your training just kicks in when you're flying and you
can't see the ground. We saw some beautiful virga against
the nearly-full moon and flew amongst the cumulus clouds while
were were vectored for the ILS 24 approach
into the vinyard.
On the approach, things started to get pretty bumpy and I got my
first taste of what it's like to try to fly an approach in
moderate turbulence while trying to look at the instruments.
There was this picture in one of my text books of an instrument
panel that was blurry from turbulence and I can only say that that
is what it really looks like. I was kind of surprised. But I
managed to keep the plane right on the glide slope most of the way
down and right at the minimums the approach lights appeared
out of the gray. It was just amazing to see the airport
appear out of thin air. (By the way, you do not know the meaning
of the word focus until you have attempted something like
this. Your world becomes very small and contains only eight
little dials.)
We landed and went into the FBO for a bit and talked to the bored
people in the office who were watching some really bad movie
starring the Governor of California. Once I had peed and most of
the high had worn off we went back out, picked up our clearance
and took off for bedford again. It was well after nightfall at
this point and the air was really starting to smooth out. I got
to spend a little more time in the clouds before we got into clear
air and I had to go back under the hood.
Smooth uneventful ride back to Bedford, except that it went really
slow. Indicated airpseed at 4000 feet: 105kts. Ground speed on
the GPS: 62 kts. It was good practice with the GPS which still
has a lot of features I'm not completely familiar with.
We flew the GPS runway 29 approach into Bedford and it got really
bumpy again under 3000 feet. Once again, good practice flying an
approach under really bumpy conditions. Had to fight pretty hard
to keep both heading and altitude at least somewhat close to where
they were supposed to be. It was windy down at the ground, too.
Winds were reported at 10kts. But I know that they were
lying. It was much windier than that. Uneventful landing.
However, I had this very nice conversation when I got down on the
ground:
<tower> Did you really fly that GPS 29 approach or did you
cheat?
<blizzard> No, I really flew that.
<tower> That was one of the best approaches I've ever
seen. Good job.
Kind of nice to end an evening with an uncoerced compliment. I
haven't had that much fun during a lesson in a really long time.
Probably not since I soloed least year.