Actual

Today was a good and productive day. I ended up switching with another student at Horizon Aviation for an earlier lesson time. I was in at Horizon Aviation at 8 this morning. We filed an IFR flight plan and received our IFR clearance from Norwood Ground. Thankfully it was a short clearance so I didn't have much to copy down. I read back the clearance to the controller and was told my "readback is affirmative" - meaning I correctly copied down the information that was just read to me and read it back correctly. Today was the first day that I actually started handling some of the radio calls on top of flying the airplane at the same time. It was exciting today because the clouds were overcast in the area at 2000 feet. Our initial assigned altitude was 2000 and to expect 4000 in 10 minutes. At just over 1200 feet Norwood Tower switched us over to Boston Departure. We contacted Boston Departure and were immediately cleared up into Boston's airspace to 4000 feet. We climbed through the clouds at 2000 feet - and what an erie feeling it was to lose sight and reference of everything that I am used to seeing visually - the ground, the sky, the sun......all gone. Thankfully the cloud layer was only about 1000 feet thick and climbed through it cruising above it at 4000 feet down to Providence. I made all of the radio calls back to departure on the way down there as we were instructed to descend to 2000 feet breaking through the clouds again and receiving radar vectors to put us on course to intercept the ILS glideslope to perform the approach into TF Green Airport, which I performed incredibly today compared to my previous attempts. I have made serious improvements on my approaches. Then I received instructions and radar vectors to depart Providence's airspace and flew through the clouds for most of the trip back up to Norwood. It was enough where we started to pick up rime ice on the wheels and the windshield. We requested to descend and were granted approval by Boston Approach. I flew the rest of the way back to Norwood under my foggles to keep simulating flying in actual instrument conditions. We completed the flight with Runway 35 localizer approach straight in to Norwood Airport. All in all a great flight with great improvements. I go up for my Stage 2 check ride next week!

Then afterward I "backseated" on my instructors next flight as he was instructing in the Diamond Star DA-40! It seemed so wierd to ride in the back and not be in control of the aircraft. Nonetheless it is an amazing aircraft and can't wait to transition into it in Stage 3 of my instrument training.