This morning, John brought over a small anti-grav training 'droid for light-sabre practice... wait a sec... wrong story again. I'd better start getting serious - I'm scheduled for a duel with Darth Vader this Monday.

We spend the morning on the simulator practicing ILS approaches. We do about three or four of them and they go quite well. After an early lunch we head out to the airport, and do another 0-0 takeoff, which goes considerably better than the last one. It immediately becomes obvious that today is *seriously* bumpy. We go to Manchester for some ILSs, and I'm having a heckuva time holding altitude. We're talking major turbulence -- you know, when you have to make several attempts to find the radio knobs. Manchester ATIS mentions Airmet Tango for turbulence, but I didn't need the radio to tell me that.

First set of vectors to the ILS, I get established on the localizer and then the glideslope, but with all the turbulence I can't maintain the descent well enough to hang onto the glideslope. We do the missed, and I try again. Same results the second time, and John says that we'll go back; this environment is not conducive to learning. I ask for one more shot at the ILS at Bedford, and he takes us down to 1800 and asks tower for a long final. He then vectors me around tightly to avoid the Boston TCA (excuse me, class B airspace), and both needles come alive at once. I go to identify the localizer, and fly right through it while fiddling with the radio. This entire exercise feels like that fellow in the carnival with all the plates and sticks - as soon as I get one spinning well, another seems to be crashing down. I get the localizer back, then loose the glide slope. John suggests I continue visually; the hood comes off and I line up with the runway. I'm fast, kind of high, and tower is calling winds 330 at 20 gusting to 30. I'm lined up for runway 29. He comments that I should be prepared to go around and I concur. Between the wind and the transition from the hood I have a really tough time lining up, so at about 300 feet I throw in the throttle and start climbing for the go-around. On the downwind, he reminds me that on this flight he's the pilot in command. Terrific. I get it on final and land it, reminding myself out loud about the control positions in the crosswind. Tower asks for a report, and I tell them it's seriously bumpy with a good crosswind.' He replies: 'Not surprising - its 25 knots'. We taxi back, and do a bit of debriefing. John feels that the flight was not wasted, but I'm disappointed that I haven't flown even one ILS properly. John thinks the simulator counts - I don't.

John invited me out to dinner with him and his wife tonight, so after some time spent flight planning, we go. We'd considered trying a couple of ILSs tonight, but by the time dinner is over its too late, so I go back to the room, fly one last ILS on the sim (and do a mediocre job), brush my teeth, and go to bed.