When I decided to leave Los Alamos, I stopped working on my instrument training to save some money. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be staying in Albuquerque, and I was at a good stopping point in terms of the training syllabus.

Since it’s clear I’m staying in Albuquerque and have a steady income lined up, I decided to start up again. My instructor at Bode had left for the airlines, so I needed a new instructor. I’ve grown attached to the situational awareness offered by a IFR-certified GPS, so I didn’t want to lose that. I had done all my IFR training in airplanes with glass panels, but that wasn’t a requirement. Shopping around a little bit, there were three options in Albuquerque — Bode at Double Eagle, del sol Aviation at the Sunport, and the Kirtland AeroClub at the Sunport. Bode was expensive and at Double Eagle, which means crossing the bridges to get there. del sol is a small operation, has a Liberty, which is small, but has dual GNS 430 GPSs, and is the middle of the price range. The AeroClub only has one plane with an IFR GPS and it’s in a 182 that requires more hours than I currently have for solo flight.

So I decided to try del sol. The instrument instructor I’ll be flying with is cool with flying early in the morning, so I’d be able to fly at least one morning a week before work, likely still beating most everyone into work. My first flight was this morning. We decided to do some intro to the airplane, then a bit of simulated instrument work, mainly the flight back to the airport from the practice area and then an IFR approach to runway 3. I liked the airplane — a Liberty XL2. Nothing fancy, but a good trainer and the dual GNS 430 units means nice situational awareness. Oh, and no flying with the Double Eagle crazies. The one odd thing about the plane is that it has finger brakes instead of pedal brakes — the steering on the ground is controlled by two levers on the center column. Not too bad, but I don’t think I’ll be doing a zero/zero takeoff (one under the hood) in the near future.

The flight was mostly uneventful. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve taken off on 8 at ABQ in something other than the RV, so the ground roll went on *forever*, but really not too bad. The plane handled really well, and has a stick which is nice. The air was smooth this morning, but holding headings & altitude under instruments was no problem. I came into the approach a little hot because tower asked me to keep the speed up, so I had trouble keeping the descent on the glidescope. I kept on the localizer until about a mile out, where I started over-correcting. Instructor decided to have me “break out” at about 500′ AGL, a bit higher than minimums, but plenty of time for me to get setup for a nice landing. Unlike previous ILS approaches, I was on top of things enough that I already had flaps down, was at approach speed, and didn’t have too much work to do to get it down.

Next flight is tomorrow morning — will probably be maneuvers under the hood to get me used to the plane under the hood, then a couple of approaches.