To bring this thread back on to the front page!!
I did my third IMC lesson today. The winds were pretty bad, and the turbulance was, well, "sporty" as my instructor put it! We left East Mids with worsening conditions forecast, (Prob30 3000 in RADZ PROB30 BKN700), and headed South, initially VFR with a Sierra Whiskey zone departure. I then spent an hour flying near Leicester with a partial panel, navigating here, there and everywhere using the compass, turn co-ordinator, rate 1 turns, and stopwatch only. It really works, and is a confidence booster (and possible life saver) if heaven forbid, you ever lose suction, and as a consequence, HI and AI).
It was not easy in the bumpy conditions, which had the compass dancing round all over the place, and for sure it was not easy to achieve an accurate heading within 5 degrees of that required. Fine adjustments at 3 degrees/second thereafter, getting us onto the heading required.
The weather really closed in for our return, which was in cloud most of the way (and at 16.00, really dark too!) so we asked for (and got, from the ever helpful controllers at E.Mids) vectors for an ILS approach. We joined on a 12 mile final at 3000' (QNH), and boy was it rough (my instructor wrote "extreme X-Wind" in the notes afterwards)!!
Keeping on the localiser in such conditions took immense concentration, with the plane crabbing some 20/30 degrees off runway heading (27), and bouncing around really badly (worst I've ever known it).
The ILS approach is made considerably faster than the normal 70 knots (we were doing 105 knots), so I had to dump a lot of speed for crossing the threshold.
The landing was OK too, though the instructor "nudged" me for a bit more 'into wind' aileron in the flare, and all this in view of an Easyjet airbus' plane load of passengers at the hold! Hope I didn't frighten them too much before their flight!! To the non-savvy eye, it may well look as if we were about to crash!!!
These ATC Vectors and ILS approaches (especially in such conditions) are frankley the best fun I've ever had flying since my GST. I was absolutely knackered when I got back home, but I am REALLY loving every minute of it.
RECOMMENDED!!