Well, I have an instrument rating. Yay!

I didn’t finish it by the end of August, so the aforementioned happy dance won’t happen. But I’m still glad.

The oral portion of the exam was only a little over an hour long. There’s an art to both the taking and administration of an oral exam. B, who administered my private oral was really good at it, whereas C, who did my instrument, is not so good. C asked some really, annoying questions, sometimes in fill-in-the-blank form. More than once I had to say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I knew everything I needed to, but he was very bad at asking the right questions. In spite of all this, he said that I did a very good job on the oral exam.

I was a bit hesitant about even taking the practical portion of the exam today because of an airmet that indicated moderate turbulence below 6,000 feet and very windy surface conditions.

I filed a flight plan from Norman to Norman, which is always a bit weird, but I had to be able to prove that I could copy a clearance and read it back properly.

The first approach he had me fly was the ILS 17L at Will Rogers. He told me, before the approach, “you won’t see the runway,” which means that I’m expect to fly the approach to decision height then execute the missed approach. It was the roughest ILS I’ve ever flown. The plane was rocking so much I could barely see the instruments. I managed to keep the needles in roughly the locations by sheer force of will, I think. I was sure that I was going to lose it about 500 feet above decision height, but I just stuck with it, fighting the airplane, the wind, and doing everything but screaming at the needles. I got through without the needles moving outside the “doughnut”, executed the missed approach, only so I could set up for the next one, the VOR 17L. The examiner told me that this approach would end in a landing, and that I would be able to see the runway when the approach was over. The VOR, not being as sensitive as the ILS and with no vertical guidance was a bit easier to fly. Still, it took a lot of work. I was at MDA and about a mile from the missed approach point when the controller informed me that I needed to get out of the way or be mown over by a 737. My examiner opted for a sidestep to the parallel runway. Since I had no idea what to do now, since I was below circling minimums for that approach, but not yet at my missed approach point, I asked him if I could look up. He said, “What did I tell you before?” This led to us yelling back and forth, me flying missed approach, and telling him that he could either quit arguing with me or fly the plane, since I couldn’t do both. He flew, and we argued some more. I maintain that it was a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and his refusal to answer was ridiculous. He tried to feed me a line about being able to make decisions on my own, but it’s perfectly obvious in real life if I can see the runway or not.

In any case, he finally decided he didn’t want to argue about it anymore, and told me to fly the published missed, which ended in a hold. I flew the hold a few circuits, which was a bit more difficult than it should have been. I needed a 30 degree crab angle and was having a hard time maintaining altitude +/- 100 feet. Gusts would knock me up and down that much quicker than I could react. After a few circuits and thinking I was about to jump out of the plane if I had to fly another one, he told me to fly the localizer 3 approach back into Norman.

He’d told me at the beginning of the flight that I’d fly the localizer back into norman partial panel (which means without the directional gyro or attitude indicator), but mercifully he either decided it was impossible given the conditions, or forgot. I’m not sure which, but I don’t know that I could have flown that approach no-gyro. I couldn’t even SEE the compass, much less guess where the middle of it’s 180 degree oscillations were. Zach insists that one can fly a no-gyro approach without even looking at the compass, just looking at the needle. But in really turbulent weather you can get turned 30 degrees off course and never realize it, so I’m not sure how this is a good solution.

With the never-ending wind, I had to maintain an enormous crab angle to maintain course, and the localizer needle was all over the place. Fortunately, I somehow managed to keep chasing it back and forth rather than getting to totally lost. The controller didn’t help by giving me some really bad vectors, mostly because of the wind. When I looked up to circle I realized just how sideways we were flying. And flying a circling approach to a runway downwind is really hard in high-wind conditions because the groundspeed is so high. I guess it’s good practice for flying planes that actually move. I circled and made a pretty darned good landing, all things considered. Wind was gusting 15-25 knots and varying +/- 30 degrees. I was about to set it down in a beautiful crosswind configuration, upwind wheel first, when a gust launched me up 15 feet, effectively messing it all up. I recovered and managed a solid, straight landing with all kinds of rudder. Oddly enough, the wind turned more straight down the runway, and I ended up touching down on both mains about the same time, with the plane headed down the centerline and it didn’t feel like I was sideways at all. I spent the taxi back trying to keep the plane taxiing straight, which was nearly impossible in that wind.

After a never-ending debrief, he passed me and signed me off. I’m an instrument pilot. And I passed the checkride first time around, which feels a lot better than having to go back for a recheck.

Now I work on my commercial license. 75% of it is solo flights, VFR. That ought to be a nice relaxing change of pace, getting to look out the window, and not spending most of my flight time breaking a sweat flying approaches. The downside is that I’m not going to be using my newfound training, essentially just going back to the skills I picked up as a private pilot. I hope the instrument skills don’t go too far away.