Instrument Lesson 2

Today I had my second instrument lesson. I've had trouble getting a plane. It's usually necessary to reserve a plane two weeks out because that's as early as the scheduler will allow and the weekends are usually booked within a few hours. So I reserved a plane two weeks ago and was disappointed to see that the winds were in the teens, gusting in the low twenties. But the wind was from the west, aligned with the runway, and I had an instructor with me, so off we went. But first, when I drove up, I saw the plane I reserved taxiing out for take-off. Because of the wind there were cancellations today so we switched to another plane that was sitting on the ramp. The one I originally reserved came rushing in just as we were starting up to leave. I think they were rushing to get it back for my reservation, albeit late. We took off to the west, a direction I've only gone once. I went under the hood right away and struggled to hold altitude and heading in turbulence. After a while, we started a vertical-S maneuver. Starting on a north heading at 3000 feet, I did a descending turn to 2000, reversing the turn once reaching a south heading, climbing back to 3000 once reaching 2000, then repeating the turns, but descending to 2100, then climbing to 2900, etc. I think I got better as I went along, but for the first time in my training, I got airsick. We stopped the vertical-S and proceeded to do the ILS 23 approach to Frederick. The glideslope was out of service, so we had to do a localizer approach, followed by a circle-to-land on runway 30. Surprisingly, after such a long time since my last flight, I still managed a pretty good landing in gusting winds. I was grateful for a few minutes on the ground while we taxied back for takeoff. I took the foggles off just as we approached Frederick and I left them off for the rest of the flight. We took off and did the RNAV 10 approach to Tipton with the foggles off because I still wasn't feeling well. Another circle-to-land; I brought it down to land in a crosswind and gusts, but again well-done. Overall, I struggled with headings and altitudes the whole way. I'll blame some of it on the turbulence, some on lack of currency, some on just needing a lot of practice. It didn't help that the GPS didn't work for the first half of the flight - it suddenly came on in flight.