I've been making some real progress in the last week or so, learning to fly holding patterns and I've just started shooting full approaches.

For what it really just a big circle in the sky, a holding pattern is far too complicated. It's more of a racetrack pattern, with the home straight being flown in a specific direction on to a specific point. It's actually not that hard, but I see why people can get confused, especially when working out which manouver to fly to enter the procedure depending on the direction you approach it from.

I had my first flight on an IFR flight plan today, which my instructor filed. We flew from Fort Pierce up to Vero Beach on radar vectors given to us by Miami Center, then flew a low approach on the VOR/DME Approach to Runway 11R, went missed and were vectored around for another go, before heading back to Fort Pierce to fly the ILS to runway 9. The glideslope and DME were inoperative, so we flew the localizer only before circling to land on runway 14.

I really like instrument flying. It's so precise, you follow an assigned route, so you can always tell where you are, you always have a heading to fly, and you should always end up where you want to be. It's so much more precise than VFR flight.

Tomorrow I shall be flying a very similar route, but this time hopefully I'll get to start talking to Miami center, which adds a huge amount to the workload.