Flight story PAHO (Homer) to PAYA (Yakutat) in MSFS

I just received my new MFG Crosswind rudders🥳 and to break them in I decided on a little tour in Alaska. I first wanted to go from PAHO to PAVD but discovered that airport doesn't exist (yet) in MSFS, so I went to PAYA instead.
For aircraft I decided on the Cessna 172 (classic, with steam gauges). I wanted to fly with live weather which forced me to go IFR because of the clouds enroute.
As for the route, I decided on PAHO MDO IDAME OCULT LLMAR PAYA, at 9000ft with an ILS 11 approach to finish things off.

After completiing the pre-taxi checklists I enjoyed the control these new rudders gave me on the ground. Smooth and without a centre detent like my CH rudders. After arriving to runway 22 I did a quick engine run up and announced my take off.
As soon as I took off from Homer airport, runway 22, I was in the clouds. Being mostly a (virtual) VFR pilot, the immersion was great. Being in the clouds without any real clue of my attitude I must say I felt insecure and in real life would've even felt some sort of panic. Luckily this is only simulated but I am glad that the autopilot took most of the workload away since I had to check my altitude. To the east of Homer Airport there is a mountain range to clear and, not knowing how heigh exactly I needed to be (my bad) I wanted to make sure I got to the 9000ft as quickly as possible.

During my climb to 9000ft I noticed the aircraft icing up quickly. Within minutes the aircraft became close to stalling. I am not sure whether that is the case in reality, but I hardly was able to keep the aircraft flying. I switched of the autopilot, pushed throttle to the max and pushed forward on my yoke in order to gain speed. I was still above the mountains and didn't know how low I could go, but the stall warning would be my first concern at the moment. I kept one on my airspeed indicator, a second nervously at my fast dropping altitude and another one was peering through the clouds trying to spot the mountains that I could be plummeting down to. Meanwhile I wondered where that third eye came from😦 I nearly panicked.

After the aircraft settled down a few 1000's feet lower I noticed the ice was melting and since I hadn't crashed into mountains I decided to stick at this altitude of 5000 ft. ATC kindly allowed me to do so and I continued my flight to yakutat.

Once in a while the clouds broke so I could enjoy the scenery (mostly ocean), but I could see land on the edge of my visual range. Even flying above water this sim is stunning compared to FSX. On top of that, I was treated with the sight of a rainbow part of the route.
Also great is that although the weather was clouds and rain along the way, it was never the same for more than a few miles. The change in weather between taking off from Homer to arriving at OCULT was very subtle, and perhaps unnoticable until you really pay attention. I must say I found that very satisfying.

What wasn't satisfying was the kind of weather it was changing into: Yakutat ATIS mentioned heavy rain, visibility 3 and cloud ceiling at 700ft. I requested an ILS 11 approach from ATC who promptly ordered me to ascend to 9000 ft😕 . After ignoring their threats to expedite my climb I was able to request a lower altitude of 3000 ft. Still in the clouds, that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted to see where I was going so I requested 1000, which was promptly denied. after 2000ft also was refused I decided I could at least slow down the aircraft already and prepare my radios for a runway 11 ILS landing. Alas, ATC had other plans. They wanted me to do an ILS 11 approach, but added to do a circle to land, runway 20😓

ATC had plenty of different approaches to choose from, but none would give a ILS landing at runway 11. Runway 20 had no ILS, and no way was I going to try that with a 700ft ceiling (and visibility below that wasn't that great either). Too bad the ATC in MSFS doesn't understand "unable" (yet) or at least a "nope". Declaring an emergency wasn't an option either (litteraly).
In the end I decided my virtual life was dearer to me than following rules so I established on the glideslope for ILS runway 11 and that got me gently down to 500ft, where I could start to see the runway. I only had a 7kts crosswind, which the 172 should be able to handle. Thanks to my beautiful and smooth new rudders (and despite my ancient CH Yoke) I made a nice landing which was recorded with SimToolkitPro: -126fpm, 46 kts and only 1° of runway heading. I landed about halfway between the runway threshold and the aiming point markers.

Despite the heavy rain at Yakutat the airport looked nice for a generic airport. There was even a marshall to guide me to my parking spot😍

There are still a lot of bugs in the sim and it isn't even half complete because why was I never questioned about my unauthorised landing on rwy11 afterwards!