Today was a tiring flight home. Winds were directly across the runway at 14-18 knots, occasionally swinging to a headwind. It took a little while for the winds to calm down enough that we could roll (18 is pretty high), but we caught a break after sitting at the hold-short line for 5 or 10 minutes. The plane was squirly once speed came up, so I did a soft field technique and got off the ground early, then nosed over (in some good chop) to pick up a bit of speed. There was a choppy 20-25 knot tailwind on the way home, so we had to stay under Va (about 120 knots in the RV) on the way home.

Winds in ABQ were from the Northwest / North, so runways 26 and 30 were in use. I’ve landed on 3, 8, and 26 but never 30 (17/35 is almost never used). To land from the North on 30, you fly over the numbers of 17 at 7000′ (about 1800′ above the ground), make a left turn and enter right traffic for the runway, staying above 7000′ until south of runway 8/26. So now you’re heading southeast away from the airport, then make the 180 turn to head back towards 30. The 180 part isn’t unusual, but it’s odd that there’s nothing to the southeast of the airport. It’s just desolate wasteland, so it’s hard to judge. So I ended up high and fast on approach. Got it figured out and pointed at the touchdown zone with slightly high speed with a massive crab from the crosswind. Tower called winds at 360@10, so there would be about a 8-9 knot cross-wind. Coming down the crosswind bled off a bit as expected, and I was all setup for a nice crosswind single wheel landing. A little fast, but when you’re slipping to keep aligned with the runway, you bleed of speed really fast in the flare. So get down, start flaring, and the cross-wind drops out on me. No problem, throw out the rudder, put it down on both mains, and roll out (but fast). Not a great landing, definitely a tiring approach, but the plane is not any worse off than before so it’s all good.

Now that I’ve seen the approach to 30, I think the next one will be much better. I think I have a better idea on where the waypoints are and how high I should be before starting the turn to base. But I suppose I won’t know until the next flight requiring me to land on 30. Yippie.