Shiva, Neeta and I decided to do an IFR flight, the day after Shiva passed his IFR check ride. We convinced Neeta to fly into actual conditions. The weather was not too bad, just a layer of clouds with tops between 4500-6000 with occasional rain showers. The briefer told us that the rain was all inland towards Big Bear and that we should be just fine along our route of flight.
I flew left seat on the way there. The climb out was pretty bumpy and then we got relatively smooth air till we passed Orange County airport. It got relatively bumpy after that all the way to touchdown. We were in and out of clouds for a while. Near Oceanside VOR, we were at 5000 when rain started pouring down as we were in the clouds. It was about time to decent anyways. I told approach that we wanted to started our decent and reported the turbulence and rain.
We shot the ILS with a circle to land on Runway 23. The winds kept moving around – final winds on touchdown were 240@11 Gusts to 27.
The Mexican restaurant on the airport was nothing to write about. Actually- it was. REALLY bad food and the guy took 20 mins to get the check.
Shiva flew back. The ride back was fun – no real bumps and we just coasted above the clouds. It was his first actual IMC flight as PIC and he did great. We shot the LOC 25 approach at HHR and finally saw the runway when we were about 2 miles out. His touchdown was smooth …. and that ended our first actual IMC flight with Neeta.
