Date: July 28, 1966

Pilot: John B. McKay

Yes, it sure is. Well as far as the pre-launch, I have nothing to add to what we have already done. I think everything went real smooth. The radios were exceptionally good today. You were coming in five square, Bill, all the time. The call down to the one minute point was excellent. When I hit my clock, in fact, it seemed like we had a lot of time to waste in that last 60 seconds. BCS check was real good, and the launch was OK. I didn't really notice any roll-off; did anybody see it? Right after launch, during the first check Bill gave me, I was scanning the cockpit, and decided that our H dot had come back in the groove. Inertials looked good and just about the time I was patting myself on the back that we had a good inertial system, the gross and computer malfunction lights came on, and I immediately reset that OK. Shortly after that, still during the boost phase, the pitch damper went out, and that reset OK. I think it was sometime after shutdown that I looked down and the ASAS was blinking at me, so I decided to go ahead and recycle that. It came back in line OK. As far as the thrust phase of the flight, there were no problems. The airplane immediately trimmed out to zero beta right at the launch, so I wasn't too much worried about that 2° left sideslip. The rotation was made around 10-11°. What were you reading down here, Bill? Were these just call outs or was I low on alpha? (Bill - No, one time there Jack, you were down to, by my clock, around 8°) I may have gotten down that low but I was oscillating between 10 and 11°. It felt like a real good round out, the last call. The first two checks that you gave me, appeared to be somewhat right on, the last call was a little high in velocity, 100,000', and I decided to shut down about 50' a second earlier. Just about that time I grabbed the throttle and was coming back, when the engine quit. So I would say that our maximum speed, I was reading about 5150. The BCS worked OK. Immediately after shutdown, I believe, it was a left roll we had to correct for. I went over to zero angle of attack and the airplane responded real well, through any BCS action. I got into a little pitch oscillation, I believe, sometime after the shutdown but I am not exactly sure just how many oscillations it was. It was not any trouble trying to damp it out with the BCS controls, As far as yaw and pitch, going over the top, there was no particular problem there. I don't mean yaw but roll and pitch. However, the airplane took a lot of concentration in keeping the yaw nulled out. It would take off and null out to about 4-6° and then I would have to bring it back with the BCS. There was not enough q to damp it. Going over the top, I feel that we were somewhat in a fairly good attitude to get some scanning pictures. So much for that. Just about the time we were picking up a little q, I would say around 120, the airplane took off in yaw. Very similar to what the simulator showed but with a frequency of about double and much higher amplitude, and this could not be damped out. I checked the yaw damper on and the yaw damper was on, and I kept checking it because I felt that primarily this may have been one thing that happened. However, on the airplane, with the yaw damper on, the airplane acted much worse than on the damper out condition in the simulator. It may be something that we may have to look into, but it could not be damped, the frequency was too high. I would probably say that it went out, oh, probably to 6-8°. What did you read on telemetry; was it that high? (4-5) Well I can't really tell, maybe a little overshoot? Well on that, the re-entry went pretty well. I did not see the field until Bill said 'make a hard right turn'. I looked over and could see the western part of Edwards. At this time, I was flying on the inertial altitude trying to come down from 60,000. I got the check from Bill to check my pressure instruments, and I immediately went from inertial down to 25 in one leap on the pressures. Maybe we ought to go to pressure a little earlier. As far as the turn into base, the landing was normal and after the shutdown and everything, Bill, you kept asking me to repeat on inertial altitude. Well, it wasn't 760' it was 76,000', and it was continually going up on the instrument. When it began to decay it decayed very fast. I believe that the highest I saw in velocity and altitude was about 5150 and 229, and probably on the overshoot we may have had, it was probably due to the small velocity error had on the inertials. I shut down on velocity at that time, and when I got out of the airplane the clock was reading 87 seconds. However, the clock sometimes keeps running. Other than that the flight was normal. ? Well I did not use H dot on the re entry. However, coming back in it did appear to be normal, and when I finally got the call from Bill, that I was going to be a little bit high on energy, I kept going downhill and I saw 14 to 1500 q, and then eased up on it. ? The yaw and oscillation damped away before I pushed down. When we picked up a considerable amount of q the yaw oscillations were completely damped. You could tell that it was trying to damp itself, but it was just like a big rubber band, and would go by the null position and just keep going, and then spring back. ? 20°. ? Well, when I first started using BCS it looked like the thing was starting to damp then it acted as though I cut the yaw damper off. It wasn't divergent in nature. So I wasn't particularly worried about it. However, I had not been exposed to this sort of thing before, in any of the three birds. ? I would give it a pilot rating of about 4 1/2 in yaw. Right. You could maneuver the thing; you could actually feel the acceleration pretty good, and if you were trying to do anything like getting a steady state data point, at this time, it would have been impossible. ? Pitch, I'd say 2 - 2 1/2 in pitch and roll. Very good even with just plain BCS. In fact, at this one time I thought we had taken out yaw RAS and not the other two. The plane handled very well. Got both lights and incidentally that was the only time that either of those lights came on before launch. I may not have noticed the SAS pitch going out the second it did, but in the process of punching out the gross and computer malfunction lights, I noticed the pitch. I think this was the way it happened. It could have been a transient. ? That's right, no trouble. In fact, all my check points were very good that Bill was calling out except the last one, cross checking between altitude, it was just a little high on energy but I elected to shut down about 50' a second earlier. I had that much faith in the velocity indicator. ? Yes and that was physically impossible, the crew chief could not even do it when it got back on the ground. ? Well, it was against the inboard stop. ? About these little oddities that we were getting on the H dot indicator, it wasn't a situation where the needle was oscillating; it would jump up to 200 and stay and it did not reset itself until you asked me to turn the altitude switch off. I was just ready to reach for it and then she came back down and jumped up again. That's the way we launched. ? You mean going over the top. 229 or 228. ? When it began to decay it went pretty fast. ? You can always knock 3 to 5 off the radar, I believe. Well, look at it this way, I think I felt it. It must have worked because it was a pretty short rollout.