Flying IFR - Lesson 39 - IFR And Landing 1000

Well this lesson while sucky, ended in a nice milestone.

The milestone being that it was my 1,000th landing.

Weather was MVFR-IFR with reports of light rime icing at 3,000 feet.

So we filed IFR and headed to do the route the examiner generally likes to do - Troy for the RNAV 9 circle to 27, then Pontiac for the RNAV 27, and then the Localizer Backcourse 27L.

On the upside I got some more real IFR time.

Yep, spent a lot of time in the clouds this lesson - rather calm clouds not very bumpy at all.  No icing happening either. Just nice balls of nothingness.

On the downside my Troy RNAV 9 circle to 27 wasn't great.  While ok overall, I was a bit off course getting there and had a lot of trouble getting the needles lined up for it. Then not a bad circle but came in a little high on final so need to work on that.

The RNAV 27 at Pontiac was just fine, no issues with that.

The partial panel Localizer Backcourse 27L just plain sucked. 

First try getting vectored I went full scale deflection and went missed.  That would be a nice fail on a  checkride. Was banking way too much to intercept it and couldn't get it so it was a major pain.

Second attempt was a fair bit better but needed to descend quicker.

Third attempt was actually good and things went well, and I landed my 1,000th landing on that one doing a side-step to Runway 27R.

At least they were all in actual and not breaking out of the clouds until past the final approach fix.

So not a lesson  with a result I had hoped for.  Felt like some major steps backward.  Here I was thinking I'm about ready for the checkride and after today's lesson not so much.

Since I'm pretty much stuck going with my not-so-favorite-examiner that would have been a hard fail.  Ah well when you think you're ready to take a step forward you end up going two steps back. Much frustration.

That's 2.1, with 1.3 actual, 5 approaches, and one good landing.