I've had a pretty cool flight yesterday, it was windy, something like 12g19 from the east, but it looked pretty clear. We took off from Lakefront to do some unusual attitudes, partial panel stuff refresher and went on to shooting few approaches. We wanted to do a VOR/DME 18 to Slidell and we heard some of the guys went missed because the ceilling was around 100 or so, they never saw the runway. We got our pop-up IFR plan for the approach to slidell and then back to Lakefront VOR/DME 36L. Both approaches had gusting winds coming from the east. The whole approach into Slidell was in the clouds, I went down to the minimum altitude which was 240 I think, didn't need a hood cause everything was white, it felt a bit disorientating at first because I haven't flown like that a whole lot, but looking down to instruments rather than gazing at the clouds helped the cause. Well, just like the other folks, I've never seen the runway and at the missed approach point we went missed and picked up the vectors back to Lakefront for VOR/DME 36L. The controller vectored us to intercept the final approach course but it had to be more than standard rate turn to get me on the final course because the winds were just trying to blow me west of the course. Runway 9 would have been far more favorable to land on and I sort of wished we could have circled to land on 9, but since we were on IFR clearence we had to land on 36L which had published instrument procedures, so we had to stick with it. I had to put in a full left rudder and quite a bit of right aileron to stay lined up with the runway centerline, taxying back to the parking wasn't any easier. It was a great experience and it makes you feel that this is the real deal because everyone can fly when it's nice no wind clear sunshine day, and that tends to become boring after a while. As a private pilot I was looking for nice days like that, but right now I'm anxious to immerse myself into those clouds up there any chance I get
Thanx for reading, happy flying holidays to all!
