December 11, 1963

Rushworth: OK, I guess starting with prelaunch I can't say that very much went off right in prelaunch. It seemed like all the way the stable platform wasn't ever going to get it, but it finally did right at the end. On the range and cross range check we didn't get anything outbound and didn't get anything until we were about at the five minute point in the turn right, when I had gone internal. My cross range started to work real good and I got a call from control that we were on track and it stayed there right up until launch. I set it at zero when we were on heading, Also nulled out the heading error and that stayed good right to launch. I was hitting so many switches in the cockpit all at one time that I got the prime at one minute instead of 40 seconds, then guessed where the 1O second point would be and I was using the clock in the cockpit trying to launch on time. Everything went good through launch and engine light and when I increased the throttle position I got stuck at the 75% throttle stop and had to go around that. At the same time I got an indication from delta psi to turn left and I got that in about the same time. I got the wings level and the nose coming up, Jack gave me a call to go right which apparently was correct because on checking the cross range indicator I had gotten about three quarters of a mile off track in the first 30 seconds. From there on up it was real good. I went to zero g at about the same time Jack said I needed another 2° direction and the only way I could get it then was to go into a steady state of sideslip which I did and I think I held that a little bit too long. I remember coming off at probably somewhere around burnout and about that time we were back near track. The first pitch input that I made and it must have been 85 and 90 seconds I got rumble out of the flight control system. Then at 300 knots again in the traffic pattern I got a slight buffet all the way around. In the neighborhood of 8 to 10° alpha, it was mostly subsonic.

Question: Touchdown speed?

Rushworth: I didn't look at that this time. I was watching the velocity when I threw the gear down and I thought the instrument was going to fall out of the panel. Everything jumped and went out of sight, when the nose gear slammed down, so I just gave up on that and watched outside. I did check it at 260 when I put the gear out and all my needles went blurred at that time and I didn't check it after that. I guess 200, 190.

Question: Heading at rollout?

Rushworth: After rollout I think it was 193. On pushover Jack had given me a call that I was approaching pushover and I checked the time. I had just gone by 35 seconds. I was about a second late. Alpha drooped while I was making the correction on the turn. It drooped down to about 7°. The rate of descent that I had was higher then cockpit indication. I was looking at a little less than 200 feet per second through that portion of the profile and I thought I would come over the 40 mile checkpoint a little high. I got to the 40 mile checkpoint and was a little low which did surprise me but I wasn't watching altitude, I was watching rate of descent at that time.

J. Russell: I don't know where the first place it went bad, you saw it whether it was when I went to the memory normal position at 15,0O0; quite shortly after that we lost the doppler and I think you gave me an erection call on the azimuth. Immediately we started straight out I guess it was a little bit premature. Right after that all the velocity errors went off scale and everything just started crisscrossing on track, it was effective but slowly. From there on everything seemed to be very much like what we had expected.

Rushworth: I think it came down hill a little faster than I had planned but the inertial system didn't give me the indication that I was coming down hill that fast until I got a check at the 40 mile point and pulled the nose up slightly there to go over the target. Went over the next check point on the correct altitude but a little bit faster than planned and the fourth checkpoint about the same altitude but a little bit fast. After we had gone over and Jack gave me instructions to shut the equipment off the glass broke, the glass broke while I was shifting from looking out the right side to back into the cockpit again, and I didn't hear it. I just realized it was broken when I looked again. From there on it was just a matter of picking up the chase and bringing him home. On the touchdown or in the final part of the traffic pattern I used the speed brakes pretty much all the way down, got them in the flare, flaps down and started hunting for the mark to touchdown on and I could see it but when I picked the nose up to stretch the glide a little bit, I put the skids on, and I felt the skid drag for a long ways and inadvertently pulled back on the stick, so it was probably a little more load than what we have experienced lately. Other than that everything was fine. It started to veer very slightly to the right and I was on the right hand side of the runway to start with. Perhaps I lined up a little cross the runway, there wasn't any problem controlling it either with stick or rudder.

J. Russell: The cross range light came on and went way out and I was chasing all over the dials trying to find out where it was and bring it back but the time you called and Milt said to go west and try to find it and bring it back. I was out there and it started moving. I saw it was going to move and finally just worked it through a lot of twisting buttons, dials, and everything. Finally got back and headed it off in the right direction again. Finally caught up and then we were in doppler malfunction all the way out or most of the way out and then it came in steady and then back in on doppler normal again and it looked like a real good system until just before the turn when we searched our loads for the turn and knocked ..........out when inertial .......... The doppler went out again but everything went: off scale again and it wasn't until we got around that turn and started coming in that everything finally started to settle out on zero again. I don't know how far out the coordinates were going to get originally, about 2 or 4 minute mark.

McKay: Between 2 and 4.

J. Russell: At drop we were somewhere around 189 miles north and about 80 or 84 east, so we weren't too far off on the sections that we were going to put it. Came good in the end, there wasn't much problem.