PILOTS FLIGHT
COMMENTS
Flight 1-39-63 October
7, 1963
Capt. Joe Engle
Engle: The alpha indicator
looked like it was working up until drop. After drop it took me a few seconds
of staring at the thing to realize it wasn't going to work. I remember
reaching up and rapping it with my hand a couple of times. I may
have reached for the reset switch, too. I know it seemed like a
good idea at the time. I took my hand off the throttle though, and by then
I'm sure I'd dropped pretty low. I was slow coming up on what was supposed
to be the alpha so I simulated a delayed engine light as we had done in
the simulator and left it at about 75% thrust I guess until after the nose
had come up through the horizon. The velocity, altitude and H-dot parameters
started to fall in and cross checkout OK, so I left it at 50% throttle.
I went to a l.5 g rotation to theta and theta seemed to come pretty quick
-- in fact theta wasn't too much after 26 seconds. It also seemed like
it took a lot of deflection to get the 1.5 g. Of course, I had a delayed
light from reaching to rap the alpha indicator, but it seemed like theta
came up just about on time. As I mentioned, the other cross checks; H dot,
velocity and altitude seemed about normal, so I left the power at 50%.
It seemed like the pitch angle was awfully steep for 20°, but the theta
vernier was nulled, and the ball indicated a little less than 20°.
I took a quick glance outside and it looked steeper than 20° but decided
to stay on the gages. The events seemed to come a little bit prior to the
programmed times. At Bob's call of 69 seconds I had already pushed over
and was just about at zero g. Speed brake velocity came a little early
also. The nose dropped through the horizon so I had to pull that back up
and then shutdown occurred a little bit early. I shutdown on the velocity
indicator at just a tad over 4,000 feet per second. As for the rest of
the flight, the whole thing went pretty fast. The two things I most clearly
remember doing was rapping the alpha indicator after launch and then trying
to guide it down the runway. After we once got off the hooks, the flight
seemed to go as advertised other than for the alpha indicator. I didn't
worry about heading too much until just about -- well, I was coming up
on theta. I didn't even look at the cross-range indicator. For the course
corrections, when Bob said 5° right, I racked up to about a 60°
bank and tried to pull it on around. Then when Bob called me to roll back
on heading, I think he said we were about 10 miles out. I rolled back
then and held it level until after he called that we'd passed Pilot Knob.
I could sure hear the skin banging away at about 3800 to 4000 feet per
second. I remember hearing Bob talk about it before so I was kind of ready
for it but it sure seemed like it was close. Right down by the old knee
bone. I was a little high on energy coming over Cuddeback but it didn't
seem too bad. A few rolls, pulling a few g's and trying some pulses seemed
to bleed off the energy pretty well. During the B-52 climb-out, it looked
like we were a lot higher than our indicated altitudes, but I guess that's
because you're looking down through all that glass at an angle and you
don't get a very good look at the ground. The landing pattern sure seemed
normal -- just like in the 104's. In the pattern, I was a little high and
had some extra airspeed, so I used speed brakes and left them out a little
longer than I had intended. I thought I was going to be a little short
on touchdown, so I delayed the gear just a little bit to try and make up
some, but didn't worry about the touchdown spot. I couldn't tell too well
when the skids hit, but if you'd happen to be relaxing at the time that
nose sure draws your attention when it raps down. It would sort of wake
you up. During slide-out, the airplane didn't seem to veer off either
direction but I tried some aileron and rudder inputs. It seemed
like you could guide down to, oh, not quite a 100 knots as Bob had briefed
me. Below that nothing seemed to make much difference. As for bank angle,
well, I rolled up to over 90° while pulling some g's after starting
down hill. The flight was on the side stick until after crossing Cuddeback,
and when I called I was going over to center stick trim, I went
to the center stick for control. At launch I was so preoccupied with that
alpha indicator I didn't really get a good correlation between the trim
rates and the forces in the airplane to those in the simulator. I was trying
to figure out why the indicator wasn't moving and if there was anything
I could do to break it loose.
Question: After
the initial abort, we picked up the checklist I think at 10 minutes, were
you rushed this time?
Engle: No, the second
time around we did use the old times for countdown, but by then I'd been
through the procedure three times, so it was no problem at all keeping
up.