2. 2 g - maintain 2 g until q = 30°.

3. q = 30°, maintain q = 30°.

4. Extend speed brakes to 20°.

5. Pushover to O g. (Hdot » 950 fps)

6. Shutdown at 5500 fps, retract speed brakes when a > 2°. Perform shallow glide slope to Cuddeback maintaining q » 5°. (Do not exceed ±8° q and f from zero during glide).

7. Peak altitude. Pushover to 0° a » 4 sec when necessary to maintain glide slope (V » 5000, 4500, 4000, 3500, 3000 fps).

8. Death Valley.

9. Pilot Knob.

10. Cuddeback - Test Mode to "Landing" (q > 0°). Pushover to a » 3°, extend speed brakes, vector to High Key. Engine Master "OFF."

11. Disarm ASAS, Disengage yaw and roll dampers, perform dV pulse (2° - 5° a) both speed brakes out and in. Reengage dampers, rearm ASAS.

12. High Key

P.C.: I haven't any comment.

B. Compare the prelaunch X-15, B-52 heading checks and the resulting ground track.

P.C.: I think I was running about 2° less on heading angle than the B-52 at launch. I made sure that X-15 was lined up on 212°, but apparently I had got so used to riding the rudder, to keep that simulator from turning, that unconsciously in the airplane I got 2 more degrees in there at about pushover time, anyway that may have accounted for our veering off to the right.

C. Was the launch accomplished without incident?

P.C.: I didn't have any trouble with the launch.

I didn't have any trouble rounding out. In fact, I was up to 16° a indicated for awhile on that pullup. The only difference I could note was having to use trim on this airplane. You have a little more trouble with pitch overshoot and homing in on the null, but once you get in a trim band it's the same kind of a job. I didn't experience any adverse affects at all. I didn't notice any return to the "Model A" from the "Cadillac" or anything else.

During the climb, cross-checking was going pretty good using the same cues I'd used in practice except I noticed as I came on, before I got much more than 2250-2300 ft/sec., I was already up to 950 ft/sec. rate of climb and I figured we're going to be a little high on this thing. I went ahead and pushed over, and further cross-checks of velocity, altitude, at 75 and 80,000 ft. had us coming out nicely, but I looked back at the vertical velocity again and it was way high for where we should have been. Like, I think it was around 850 ft/sec. at 90,00O ft. Disregarding the ground call outs about coming high I retarded the throttle, but not all the way to the stop.

It still didn't slow down enough so I went back to the 50% thrust stop and then further augmented the deal by a negative 0.3 or 0.4g push down.

After vertical velocity came down to below 300 ft/sec. I rammed the throttle forward and gained the last 250 or 300 ft/sec. forward speed in full throttle where it burned out.

B. Describe roll-yaw airplane motion at speeds above 4500 fps.

P.C.: The best thing I can say about the roll-yaw airplane motion at speeds above 4500 fps, at zero g or less was --- I didn't have any. At least if there are any they are of such small magnitude as to be unimportant to the piloting task.

C. Which reference was used to shutdown? (i.e. burning time or velocity)

P.C.: I have already mentioned that I was going on velocity rather than burning time since I had previously throttled the engine and had the timing pretty well goofed anyway.

D. Rate the overall pilot task during the boost phase of the flight.

q 2 , f 1 , y 1.5 when changing trim

q 1 , f 1 , y 1.5 after adjusting trim

P.C.: I'd like to split this as shown to account for the job I mentioned in fiddling with the trim to home in on the selected pitch angle. After adjusting pitch trim, the task would be essentially the same as with ship 3. Roll was no problem all the way. Yaw was slightly more of a problem due to the amount of attention required hanging on to the desired heading.

E. Note any additional pertinent observations during the boost phase of this flight.

P.C.: The only other observation I can think of would be that for some reason we gained vertical velocity at a much more rapid rate on the actual flight than we did on the simulator practice. I wonder if we weren't getting more thrust out of the engine than we'd been furnished from the ground run operation.

P.C.: I wasn't able to tell, except from heading being off, how far off track I was getting and this accounted for my callouts. NASA-1 asked for a 4° correction back to the left. It seemed like a rough job getting that much, and I wanted to know how off track we were. I made about, two major efforts to get the heading back the 4°, I was showing 214° when NASA-1 called, or had shown 214° at the worst error, and I had got almost 2° of that back when NASA-1 called. I thought maybe he meant from where I had been, but it was a rough job getting it back that last 2°.

B. Describe corrective control inputs applied to change the heading.

P.C.: I was showing a right sideslip practically all the way back down the line and I discovered that I had to stand on the left rudder consciously to hold the heading from drifting off to the right. That may account for some of the trouble I was having getting the airplane corrected to the left, and yet I didn't seem to notice this problem during the powered phase. I laid on the left rudder, thought I could warp it a couple of degrees, but it just didn't work and all I did was keep it from going any further to the right.

I can see the horizon but I can't see enough of a landmark over the nose to check on heading at all. I have to look down to the side and about all you can do is note about how far under the nose the track would be. Just for reference purposes when I looked out at Three Sisters, I judged I would go possibly half-way between Cuddeback and Searles Lake, and yet when I nosed over after passing Cuddeback, I was pointed only about 5 miles north of the Edwards lakebed. I didn't consider that to be any error at all at that point.

C. Estimate length of time the airplane was controlled within planned limits in pitch and roll attitude.

P.C.: Aside from the two times when I was making left heading corrections, bank angle was always less than ±3° and the pitch attitude was never out. I would say that my maximum pitch indication was +6°. I got around to rotating the pitch set to zero and when I did I noticed that zero on the 3 axis ball was about -3° on the vernier, but I had definitely been riding with it above zero q aside from the pitch downs to zero angle of attack.

D. Rate pilot task to perform the tracking mission.

q < 300 psf q 1 , f 3 , y 1.5 .

q > 300 psf q 1 , f 1 , y 1.5 .

P.C.: Shortly after engine shutdown as the dynamic pressure dropped below about 300 psf, the airplane became very sloppy in roll. It wasn't too bad in pitch but it was just a terrible job trying to hold bank angle inside the 10° limit and I began to think this was going to be a pretty lousy flight if it kept up, but I was coming down hill and as I gradually picked up q there was no longer any problem, lateral-directional, or in pitch all the rest of the way home.

Of course the major problem I had in yaw was getting back the heading error. If it hadn't been for that this would be no worse a rating then I'd give any instrument flight. You simply have to spend a lot of attention on heading and that's the words that go with the rating shown. Also, I think you get a little better pitch and roll reference visually, you get these little cues out of the corner of your eye, that you don't on the heading.

F. Was approach from high key and landing accomplished without incident?

P.C.: I didn't have any trouble with the approach. I did note on the high key to flare portion of the profile that I reoriented myself at a rapid rate to keep a little nose down trim at 300 knots and letting it set at that speed from there on. It was just too easy to get the nose too high if I let the trim take out all the force.

G. Describe and rate the pilot control task to retrim following the dampers off rudder pulse at M » 2.0, a » 6°.

q 1 , f 2 , y 2 .

P.C.: I had ASAS off, and roll and yaw off, and did a real small rudder pulse hoping that it wouldn't tilt the airplane further over. It went through a couple of cycles but it rapidly rolled under. I was in a 45° bank already and it kept on rolling the same direction. It didn't seem bad, what I saw of it and was slightly damped. I couldn't take my hands off but I made a conscious effort not to move the stick. I didn't have any trouble retrimming back to level flight. The only problem was in keeping the bank angle from spiraling off.

You could tell the airplane motions were convergent so it didn't seem that there would be any haste in trying to do anything about damping the oscillations other than maybe if you had a lot greater amplitude you'd probably clamp the roll amplitude down. I didn't get a very long look at this maneuver but it didn't look like it would be any worse than some other aircraft at this speed and angle of attack (M » 1.8, a » 7°). We go along for instance in an F-104A around 0 9 Mach, with a slab tail on it and it will sit there and cycle at about this rate directionally and all it does is bother you, it doesn't upset your control of the airplane or anything else. However, I think I'd have to say I wouldn't honestly be able to make a firm input on this maneuver since I didn't get to look at it long enough to tell anything other than what I saw wasn't bad.

P.C.: I want to mention this full speed brakes, low angle of attack wormy sensation. This was at a velocity of say 3200 ft/sec. to 2500. What I was appreciating was lateral acceleration. It didn't seem to have a regular period, possibly the motions could have been reasonably periodic, but the amplitude of the acceleration varied so that sometimes I noticed it and sometimes I didn't. As soon as I entered the higher angle of attack, higher g turn, all this went away. And, there was no noticeable change in airplane handling or motion characteristics when I closed the brakes in the turn and this time the Mach now was down closer to 2.0.

B. Compare flight profile and controllability with the simulator.

P.C.: I already made one relative to the pickup in Hdot. It seemed like we got there faster than on the simulator, if I did in fact push over at 38 seconds. I started to pushover at 950 ft/sec. vertical velocity rather than 900, and I started earlier than the forward velocity would have been, according to the practice we had, so once again my guess is that we must have had better thrust than we'd allowed for on the simulator.

I find it a lot easier to fly the airplane than the simulator, even mentally subtracting algebraically the electronic quirks it has. You get a lateral clue from the window (horizon) and I get rotary acceleration clues, so I respond to things flying the airplane that are nonexistent on the simulator. As far as the response to control inputs, etc., it seems to be about the same.