PILOT QUESTIONNAIRE

Flight 1-56-93 Pilot: Milt Thompson

I. PRELAUNCH AND LAUNCH PHASE

A. Evaluate briefly flight performance of the following items during the prelaunch period and/or the launch maneuver.
1. Ball nose - Was real good.

2. Launch transients (q, f, y) - There weren't any real launch transients, very little roll off.

3. Unforeseen incidents - No unforeseen incidents.

II. BOOST PHASE A. Evaluate flight performance in the following areas during the "power on" portion of the flight.
1. Controllability during q run - Was excellent. For a change today I used trim practically all the way and never did get into more than 1 or 2 periods where I had a lot of force and had to retrim to get rid of it.

2. Rate control task -

q 2 , f 2 , y 2 .

I think I had my foot on the rudder again through the boost phase because I did get a heading change in there. Later on I did remember to take my foot off the rudder and from there on beta was in there all the way.

3. Altitude profile versus simulator - Got awful confusing because, along with the clock error that I had to add in, the inertial altitude was off. It was a matter of relying on ground call out versus approximate timer versus speed and it was kind of a hit or miss boost all the way through. I realized eventually when I kept getting call outs from NASA-1 that were not agreeing with my inertial altimeter that I had inertial altitude problems and it looked like I was going to come out low. So, I ended up towards the tail end of the boost pulling up to more than zero alpha and I think, going over the top I probably had 3 or 4 degrees to get up on profile again.

4. Unforeseen incidents - After I got the engine started and looked at the clock, I saw it wasn't working. I thought I out-smarted it because I used my other clock as a standby, but the problem was, in asking for another verification on lignite I was about 5 seconds late. I pushed over on that clock at 40 seconds. I realized I must have been a little late, so I had to start adding 5 seconds to everything else to make things come out normal. There were no other unforeseen incidents.

III. GLIDE PHASE A. Evaluate flight performance in the following areas during the "power off" portion of the flight.

The glide phase was much nicer this time than the last flight, which was almost identical, I think primarily because SAS worked all the way. My first pull up after going over the top to about 8 or 9 degrees felt real comfortable. I didn't have any feeling that it was loose in pitch. I pulled up to about 8 1/2 - 9 degrees and it stayed right there. Hdot came right into where it should have been. "What about the pitch oscillation after burnout?" It could have been when I was retrimming in there. I retrimmed and I think that may have been one of the places where I had some force on the stick and had to release it to get the trim knob. Pitch, in this type of run, is not as comfortable as you see it on the simulator. It just seems to be less damped and this is the overall damping, airplane and SAS.

1. Burnout transients - There were no burnout transients that I could tell.

2. Dampers off roll maneuvers - After passing 50 miles, I turned ASAS off and yaw and roll off, and rolled it over into a left bank. I started pulling it up but I never did get to 8 degrees in that left one. I knew I was left, of course, so I didn't want to do a lot of turning in there and I think I probably didn't exceed 6 degrees or so, but I did get a pretty good feel for the roll and yaw in this region. I think the velocity right in here was about 3,000 feet per second when I first started it. Pitch, of course, was pretty good, except I kept pulling on it and never did get up to 8 degrees.

a. Left roll - In the left roll, pitch would be about 2 1/2, roll is probably about 3 1/2 to 4, and beta is probably about 3 1/2.

b. Right roll - On the right roll I think I got up about 7 to 8 degrees in there and the velocity was probably about 2800 feet per second. Pitch, again, would be about 2 1/2, roll would be 3 1/2 to 4, and yaw would be about 3 1/2.

c. Airplane response - The big problem is the gearing that you end up with in roll. You've got a lot more roll rate versus stick deflection under this condition than you have dampers on. So, the tendency is to over control in roll. I didn't do this in rolling from the left to the right, I just made a fairly small, what I consider a small input and got a fairly high roll rate. Then, in stopping it, you set up a little beta oscillation. Beta didn't worry me nearly as much as the roll itself. It's not the roll coupling or the dutch roll tendency in here that would really cause you to rate it low, it's the fact that you do have this real high roll response. I think that you certainly could fly it very adequately, but, I think it would be more than you'd ever desire. I don't think I'd like to land with it like that. Now, the q is probably about 500 in there, 500 to 600, so it would be a higher q than what you would have anywhere in the pattern. In making a roll input and stopping this high rate of roll, you'd excite beta but it would damp out and you have the feeling that your only problem was keeping roll where you wanted it and remembering to make a very small input when you want to change bank attitude.

3. Glide energy management versus simulation - We've got problems there. The simulator has told us quite different Mach numbers from 50 miles on back to Edwards, and when we made the map we actually used speed brakes in decelerating to get to Edwards. But the last day that we were flying up here on the simulator we were not using speed brakes and it came very close to what we saw on the flight today. So there's almost a Mach number difference in arrival conditions at Edwards. The day when we made the map we had almost a Mach number more in arrival Mach number at Edwards than we had in actuality. So, I talked to John Perry and we figured we had a problem in the plotter because we compared velocities against time and so on, but yesterday the plotter was right and the energies we were seeing were right, but when we made the map they were off and this is a pretty bad situation.

4. Approach and landing - Were quite normal. I came out brake after getting all the flap and gear down. There was one thing in the approach, however. I was about 44,000 feet over high key and was coming subsonic when I started that turn around and I had about 320 knots indicated which would probably be up around 340 true or calibrated airspeed. In turning I was getting quite a bit of buffet. I was only up around 9 or 10 degrees in this turn and I checked the g at one point in there and I had between 2 1/2 and 3 g's. I felt this buffet today more than I felt even in the real tight turn the last flight I made. And there I think I averaged about 3 1/2 with peaks on up over 4 g.

5. Unforeseen incidents - No unforeseen incidents in that area.

B. Describe and rate the most adverse piloting task experienced on this flight.

The most adverse piloting task, of course, occurs in this damper off area. It would be similar to the ratings that I gave you previously.