P.C.: Prelaunch was accomplished without incident other than the problem with the a indicator, that was about the only thing, Everything else checked out real good, just like everybody said it would.

B. Was the launch accomplished without incident?

P.C.: Here again the a indicator. I waited way too long for that thing to come up. I came back on the stick and started to trim it, but a wasn't changing so I reached up to rap it thinking maybe that was going to do some good, but that also delayed the engine light.

I was fooling around with the a indicator and thought I was late coming on the throttle. Because of that I left it on 75% thrust in order to get it back on profile. After we started going up, H with the increment shoved in, was still reading a little bit low, but I think maybe that was just my eyesight or the parallax.

I noticed I forgot to throw in the aileron correction at launch. I had it in and came off the hooks and the a meter wasn't working, and I let go of it. I did notice a little bit of a right roll-off but nothing wild or violent. It might be that there was a little bit of aileron left in, but the roll-off wasn't bad.

Laterally it seemed like it took a little while to keep from wobbling the wings and I don't know why. The roll rates seemed to be real close to what's in the simulator. In fact, the whole spectrum of handling qualities seemed to be just like what the simulator had told us, except for the acceleration forces.

C. Rate the piloting task to recover from the launch maneuver and the rotation into climb attitude.

q 2 , f 1-2 , y 1 .

P.C.: I'd rate the piloting task as shown. q would be about 2, I guess, mainly because I was preoccupied with that a indicator and I didn't know how much force I had in, or rather how much trim I had in.

P.C.: Once we got onto q it didn't seem to be a whole lot of problem. It looked at first like we were right on at 40 seconds. We came right through and the H-dot that we programmed and looked at in the simulator quite a few times and 50 seconds looked good. At 60 seconds it looked like it was starting to get a little bit ahead and I pushed over then at 65,000 ft. with a cross check on H-dot. I pushed over a couple of seconds before Bob called it out because I was almost to zero g when he called push-over.

From there on things seemed to occur a little faster. The speed brakes came out just prior to his call, although I don't remember exactly whether he had called them or not.

Shutdown was quite a bit early too, because Bob hadn't even gotten to his count yet when I shut down and I was just over 4,000 ft/sec indicated.

B. Rate the piloting task during the following segments of the boost profile.

1. Climb at 20° q q 1-2 , f 1 , y 1 .

2. Climb at An = 0, Speed brake closed q 1 , f 1 , y 1 .

3. Climb at An = 0, Speed brake open q 1 , f 1 , y 1 .

P.C.: The pilot task during the boost profile I'll rate as shown above. Pitch wasn't too much of a problem but I cheated on that. Since I didn't have an a indicator I cranked in zero on the trim and looked at the normal acceleration. It looked about zero so I let it go at that. Roll was no problem whatsoever and neither was yaw.

With the brakes open I didn't notice any difference at all. Here again I was just more or less maintaining wings level and I wasn't making any pitch inputs or yaw inputs and the nose was coming down to the horizon about this time.

H-dot was creeping around anywhere from a 100 ft/see below to 100 ft/sec above and I didn't seem to be able to center it out. I couldn't get the right trim, or right attitude and was fishing back and forth.

I didn't notice any thrust misalignment at all at burnout.

Looking at pitch attitude on the ball, it was showing about 17° or 18° and there again I guess it was because I was looking down on it. The pitch vernier needle was nulled and these cross checks were coming out real good.

I was impressed with the steepness of the climb. I was locked in the cockpit, on the instruments, but when I looked out it felt like I was going up real steep. I don't know whether it was the way the sun was coming in the window, but the ball indicated a little bit less then 20°, and the needle was nulled. Everything else was checking out so I looked out and it looked steep, but I figured that was just because you don't generally climb at 20°.

P.C.: I was at 212° heading when NASA-1 asked for a 5° correction and I cranked around to about almost 220°. I remember that it came awfully slow in the simulator, so I cranked on up to about 60° bank angle and pulled around to where it was almost 220°. I rolled out and was back to almost 217-218°. I never did get back to the original heading. When NASA-l said "roll back" I did roll back some and then figured I was getting pretty close so whipped her back level. I sure didn't notice the cross range indicator. I hope there's a camera or something photographing the meter because that's the only thing I had to do when I was going across there but I just forgot to, look at it.

B. Rate the pilot control task while maneuvering to the required ground track, and during the performance of deliberate aileron rolls.

Tracking q 3 , f 2 , y 1 .

Rolls q 1 , f 1 , y 1 .

P.C.: In pitch the nose seemed to drop. I think pitch was a little hard to stay on top of while I was making these bank angle changes, but I think it was because I was slow coming in on normal acceleration. I was coming in with some back stick but it wasn't picking up the "g". Like in the 60° bank, I should have been holding about 2g to maintain level flight, and I was slow coming in with the control and started to drop. In fact, I think this is where I started dropping down. Response in roll was a little bit slow, but yaw didn't seem to be any problem. I really didn't attempt to boot the rudders to maintain ground track or anything. I relied mostly on banking for changing the heading. Around Mach 2.0 the airplane just felt as good as anything I've ever been in, it really felt good.

C. Compare the airplane motion excursions experienced during III-B above with the simulator practice.

P.C.: The stick forces seemed a lot lighter on the center stick in the airplane than they did in the simulator, and I don't know whether this is just imagination or what. They didn't seem real light, not to the point of neutral stability or stick reversal or anything, but the stick force gradient was just nice and light, it felt real good. All the way from about Mach 2.0 where I switched over to center stick, down to landing, there weren't any high forces on the center stick at all. Also, I think I was using about the same deflection on the center stick, maybe a little more if anything.

D. Was approach from high key, and the landing accomplished without incident?

P.C.: In the pattern I tried dumping the nose to get rid of a little altitude, and the velocity started to build up somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 knots, so I started sneaking out some speed brakes, and had speed brakes out to one degree or another, all the way. I pulled them in just prior to putting the flaps down.

P.C.: I think it handles nicer than the F-104, particularly in roll and pitch. In the pattern the X-15 seems to be more maneuverable than the F-104. It's easier to make corrections and stick forces are lighter, it's just a nicer feeling airplane.

B. Compare in general the flight profile and controllability with the simulator.

P.C.: Well on the profile the nose dropped down through the horizon and I did get a rate of descent set up as is indicated on the radar track. I never did get above 74,000 feet and it dropped down to about 72,000 feet, as indicated on the inertial altimeter, and 1 pulled it back up to 74, and then held 74,000 feet until I made the bank correction to get back on track. Then I dropped down to 72,000 feet and as I crossed Pilot Knob I had 72,000 feet and about 3200 fps velocity. Response wise controllability is just exactly like the simulator. There's something different about the simulator but I don't know exactly what it is, unless it's just the fact that you've got the acceleration forces on you in the airplane. But as far as a qualitative comparison, I couldn't make any differentiation. Quantitatively I like the airplane better because you're logging time.