Most unfortunately, the Liberty has been stuck at the LIberty plant in Florida for the last two months for some AD corrections. It’s finally back, and I finally got to go instrument flying today. Since we hadn’t been up for far too long, today was going to be some review — shoot some approaches and fly some maneuvers. The winds were out of the south, so KABQ was using runway 21, which always makes things interesting and very busy.

The most amazing thing happened during takeoff — I got to cut in line in front of an airliner. He called ready for takeoff, was told position and hold at the end of 21. I called in right after that ready for takeoff at an intersection further down 21 (since the Liberty doesn’t need all 10,000′ for takeoff). The tower actually sent me out first, since I’d have a three minute delay after his departure for wake turbulence and he’d just have to wait for me to get off the runway centerline. So I departed first and as soon as I was a safe altitude (pretty quick), I made a turn 30 degrees off runway centerline so he could go. He probably wanted 90 seconds for me, but it was much appreciated.

After departure, we headed over to KAEG, with me under the hood. I established an istrument scan pretty quickly, which was a nice surprise. I think the practice time with the flight simulator on my computer was helpful on this front. Albuquerque approach was insanely busy, as was the airspace around Double Eagle. Thankfully, the approach controller was a saint and handled the load very well. She caught one of my mistakes but was very kind about helping correct (I turned to a heading of 210 when I should have turned to 120).

Approaches weren’t as smooth as I would like, but not bad. I shot 2 ILS 22 and 1 GPS 22 approaches at Double Eagle. We had to break all three off earlier than I would have liked because of traffic — everyone was using Runway 17, which meant traffic on base cutting right across my final approach coarse. Not their fault, of course, as that’s the way it works when the wind is strong and out of the south. I was within one dot on all three when we broke off, so that makes me happy. Still need to get better about not searching quite so much when I’m flying the approach, but it’ll come.

KABQ was so busy that we just flew VFR on the way back and made a VFR approach to 21. My landing absolutely sucked, but I’ll get there. I was too tired at the end of the flight — need to get in better shape with the scan for long periods of time.