After my cross country flight, I remarked to Andy that I'd like to get some actual in before my instrument checkride. God must have been listening too, because the day of my next flight, Feburary 14th (I took my wife out the night before!) it was solid overcast most of the day.

1568R was available again, having had its attitude indicator replaced a few days beforehand. I noted a discrepancy between the tach/hobbs time indicated and what was in the computer, evidently I was the first one to fly the airplane after the work. So I was going to get to be the guinea pig to see if the AI actually worked properly for more than a 5 minute check on the ramp. Yipee.

The plan was to fly to Centre, Alabama (C22) to fly the full VOR/DME arc to RWY 27, do the VOR or ILS into Rome, then come back and do the localizer or GPS into Cobb County. Of course, like most things in flying, what you plan to do and what actually happens usually diverge from each other. Observed weather at Cobb County at time of departure was 4 mile visibility and an overcast celiing at 600 feet and a 5-6kt wind from the northwest. Temps were high enough at all planned altitudes where icing shouldn't be of any concern.

I got my flight plan filed, pre-flighted the airplane, layed out my approach plates, called for my clearance, dialed my flight plan into the GPS, taxi'd down to 27, did the run-up, checked my instruments, and away we went. About a mile off the departure end of 27 I started poking my head into the cloud deck, and about 650' AGL, I went to zero/zero. For the first time in a long time, I was flying in actual instrument conditons. I knew flying in the clouds added some bumps to the situation, but I had forgotten how much it did. It wasn't too bad, but it required a little more vigalence on my part to keep the airplane pointed in the right direction and to maintain my assigned altitudes. I think a combination of that, and getting a little fixated on the attitude indicator, led me to being behind the airplane for the first half of the flight.

My first issue came up when we stated our intentions to Atlanta Approach. The controller got a little perturbed that I didn't file to the IAF for the first approach I wanted. Actually I started to, but then Andy said we could just request the approach in the air, since we were likely to get cleared straight to the airport as soon as we were airborne anyway, as C22 is just barely 50 miles away from Cobb County. So he goes and calls the center, and comes back to tell us to fly direct to the IAF for the VOR/DME arc, then hands me off to to center.

While all this is going on, I climb through 5000' or so, and break out of the cloud tops. It is an absolutely amazing and beautiful sight. Approach asks me what the weather is like up there, to which I reply, "It is clear as far as I can see, what clouds are above me are higher than I can climb to!", which gets a little chuckle from the controller.

When I called Atlanta Center, they threw a wrench into the entire plan for the day. Evidently I wasn't the only one who thought this would be a good day for some practice in IMC and there were no less than 3(!) aircraft shooting approaches into Rome and Cartersville. The traffic into Cartersville isn't the problem so much as the guy at Rome. All of the approaches into Rome use the Rome VOR for an IAF and/or missed approach hold, as does the approach I want to fly to C22. I ask for a hold to wait for the guy flying the ILS to Rome to get out of the way, but Center replies there's already one right on top of the VOR right behind the guy doing the ILS. So he can't (or won't) hold us there. Instead, he just tells us to fly direct to C22 and he'll turn us back towards the VOR when he can. So much for doing the DME arc. This goes on for about another 10 minutes, the 2nd guy goes missed at Rome and heads off to Cartersville to shoot another approach there. Luckily the 3rd airplane going into Cartersville had already cleared out of the way by the time all this was going on, otherwise it would have been a real zoo.

After all this, I finally get cleared back to the Rome VOR, and then cleared for the VOR/DME approach to C22. I start my descent to 4000', and since there's no charted procedure turn or hold-in-lieu, I fly over the VOR, give myself about 30 seconds, and do a standard rate turn to the left to intercept the inbound heading. Opposed to loading the approach in the GPS, Andy had me keep Rome VOR as my direct to waypoint so I'd have distance information and then fly the approach using the CDI tuned into the VOR. At the first intermediate fix, CAVIN, I start down to 2200', and a few minutes later the clouds start to break up. By the time I reach the FAF, there are large gaps and the ground is pretty much in plain sight. Being mindful to continue to fly the approach, particularly since there are still clouds below me, I continue on down to the MDA, passing through a few smaller clouds on the way down. I reach MDA about a mile and a half away from the missed point, and start looking around. I wasn't maybe a dot off on the CDI, but I can't find the airport. Andy tells me to look to my 1:30-2 o'clock and there it is. He remarks to me, "some of these VOR approaches give special meaning to the term 'non-precision approach'". Even though I was well within the tolerances of the approach, at 25 miles from the VOR, even that relatively small error off the radial puts you about 1/4 mile or more to the south of the runway. I turn towards the airport and at the MAP I go missed.

Climbing up to the missed approach altitude (4000') I intercept the 270 radial (flying 090 to, of course) from Rome and start trying to call the Center. I get within a few miles of the holding point before I finally establish contact with them and get IDd on RADAR. If I had not been able to contact the Center before that point, I would have had to have entered the hold. Instead I'm cleared to climb to 5000' but even though I'm out of the clouds at that altitude, it is just barely so. I'm still getting bumped around a little, so I request to go up to 7000' to find some smoother air. A handoff back to Atlanta Center got me a clearance direct to EKACU, the IAF for the north leg of the GPS 27 back to Cobb County. There's not much to flying a GPS approach (in my opinion) as long as you hold altitude, and it was rather satisfying to break out of the overcast at about 800' and have the runway directly ahead of you, right on the LPV "glide slope".

It was kind of a so-so flight. I executed the approaches well, but I was struggling a bit with the airplane, which I attribute to a breakdown in my instrument scan. Also, due to all of the confusion with ATC, I lost my mental picture of where I was and what I needed to do for a moment, which put me a little behind the curve. Add in a little vertigo, and I just didn't have the best feeling about my performance for that lesson. At least later on I found out part of the difficulty I had in maintaining heading was that the airplane was, in fact, pulling to the right because someone had (probably accidentally) tweaked one of the trim tabs on an alieron, after someone complained about it pulling right on an instrument checkride a couple of days later.

Andy's main take-away for me was that I needed to improve my cockpit organization a little bit, in regards to checklist items. On our initial climb-out, I left the fuel pump running, along with the landing light. While neither item affects the performance of the flight, keeping on top of the checklist is something that the examiners definitely look for. Despite that, he said I still flew relatively well, he noted that I was little off compared to the past couple of flights, but wasn't too concerned about it. He scheduled me for my stage check flight with one of the other Senior CFIIs there the following weekend, but I had to scrub that because of gusty winds and this upcoming Sunday isn't looking too good either for the same reason.

In the meantime, I'm going to get my written out of the way, and just continue to practice on Flight Sim at home, paying particular attention to my scan and practicing holds, approaches, timed turns, etc.