Date: August 11, 1966

Pilot: John B. McKay

That's about all I have to say. I don't really have any comments before launch. I think the launch was just according to the book. The only comment I have, is the same as we had yesterday, and I think what we ought to do is paint a picture of the beta calibration on the panel somewhere, so that I can remember it. Instead of 4°, that we were off yesterday it was around 2°, probably a little over. Today just before launch we were reading between 1 1/2 and 2, right yaw, and right after launch the thing straightened out pretty good. ? I did not experience too much roll off, on the launch. The rotation of a train of 10 to 11° alpha, and going up through the thrust I got Bill's call to check my throttle is against the stop and I imagine that we were getting that chamber pressure OK. The theta came about 31 seconds right after Bill's call to 'standby,' after that time it felt like I was right on profile. I started congratulating myself that everything seemed to be going along pretty well, and all of a sudden the computer light came on, the computer malfunction light, and I was getting ready to reset that and the pitch and roll light came on; SAS out light came on in that order. When this came on I was just in the process of trying to correct a left yaw condition. I imagine a thrust maladjustment. I had to take my attention over trying to get these lights out. The computer light did not reset. The roll light reset but the pitch SAS did not, at that time, and I finally got them both out later. Right after shutdown or somewhere during the shutdown I remember going through about 82, seconds. I pushed over and killed my alpha thinking about going in profile. However, I am sure that this did not do any good, and the airplane kept going to the same trajectory. Going over the top the airplane held very well. We got down to about a minus 5° theta, and from there on it was oscillating between there and a minus 8. BCS handled it very well. The yaw did not seem to diverge out like it did on the last flight. It was very easily controllable. One thing that I did notice, was just before shutdown, we were getting a fairly good right roll off that I had to correct through BCS. I am not exactly sure whether this was due to the SAS channel going out at this time. I think I caught the SAS channel the second it went out. As far as the re-entry, I never did get quite up to 20°. We made the re-entry with the dive brakes closed. Didn't get into this lateral directional oscillation that we experienced on the last flight. However, once in a while I did experience a little wing drop and a very comfortable thing which, at the time, I attributed to the pods on the wing. You'd get up to about 15° and you would try to hit 20, and all of a sudden the wing would drop and the thing would go off on yaw a little bit. My attention would be concentrated somewhere else. I would say that the re-entry was made somewhere 9 to 1000 pounds of q, and I must have been able to see the field 100 miles away, because the computer on top of my neck began working pretty early, and I was listening to Bill's call about keeping her coming downhill, but I think I over did it. Trying to cut off my altitude and make a right turn I got up to about 2000q. Immediately started getting a little positive h dot again, even against Bill's call about not letting it get positive. I was doing this on purpose. She began to go off a little and I got right over the field and I could not see home base. I could see Rosamond, so about that time I decided to make a right hand downwind, and the saying that you can see out of the right hand window as well as you can the left, it looks pretty good. Then all of a sudden I saw two little white flashes go under me and I decided that I was glad I wasn't in chase 4. The landing was pretty conventional. One thing I experienced right after touchdown, right after the nose came down, the airplane seemed to make a sharp pulse, sharp left roll pulse, as all of a sudden the fluid went out of the shock or maybe the left hand skid may have hit something. But the thing seemed to diverge over to about 5° in roll, and at the time this was just a second after the nose gear came down. The airplane diverged to the left and went off the runway, and it was a left turn from there on. We may have hit a little puddle out there or something of that nature. One comment, as far as the BCS action, we did not have the nose BCS heaters on this flight, In fact we did not have them on the last flight, and according to Vensel's instructions about how to prime, by putting in very small inputs, it certainly didn't seem to do any good and for about five minutes before launch, I was in a position as to where I could not even see the ground. If we would have had an emergency launch I think it would have been pretty detrimental. I suggest that we don't go without nose BCS heaters. I was wondering, up to the launch point, whether this stuff was going to beg off or evaporate, and it finally did. We had a little bit. Other than that the flight was normal. I will have to retract my statement I made a little while ago as to whether I let the engine shut down I think that I may have shut the engine down. I was in the process of reaching for it, and probably through habit I may have actually shut the engine down. As far as going over the top, I was reading about 228 or 230. That h dot was reading well. Was that max altitude that you called out? When I called this out, Bill, it was going right through zero and h dot, getting reading to go negative. I can't think of anything else, except the thing we were getting in the simulator by keeping the brakes in and having a very slow period oscillation. Instead of one where the heat effect comes out and you are sitting there faced with a pretty good sharp input. I did not try to actually correct any of these through the rudder pedals. As we began to pick up a little q, I do remember putting in some BCS action that seemed to damp out a very slow directional oscillation to begin with, and it therefore set up the maneuver for a real nice clean reentry. That's all I have. The beta excursions, that we got right down the end there, Stan; it was such small potatoes that I wasn't even getting any acceleration in the cockpit, and it felt pretty clean. ? Well almost nil. to speak of. The wing drop was during the re-entry. In fact, it was real small. I could sense it, but you can always sense a roll more than you can directional acceleration. ? As we were getting ready to come on with a little g, yes. I attribute this to the wing pods. ? No I did not notice that at the reentry. That's another thing to, when Bill called out to have me watch my alpha on the turn-around, I don't remember experiencing any buffet that we normally do, separation or things of that nature. We weren't pulling, of course, when I ride it down I don't think we were pulling over 2 1/2 g's. ? Beta zero, right down the middle at the launch. When Bill gave out the 58,000' call I was reading around 3 on inertial, and that was a true call I gave on the ground, I was reading over 900 thousand feet, unless I went backwards. ? I'd say a good 20 seconds. ? That's right, I tried to reset it. I think the sequence of events occurred like this. That when the computer light came on, I reached over and tried to reset it, and then the SAS light started blinking. I got the roll SAS off, but I'm not sure about the pitch SAS, as far as being able, I was under a pretty good g loading at the time, and I am not sure whether, in reaching to try to reset the pitch SAS, whether I hit the thing all the way and recycled it completely. This may have been the reason. I was on ASAS, right. ? I disengaged ASAS, right. That's one thing I don't want to do is make a reentry on ASAS, if I have got the SAS that is working . It's possible that the SAS lights came on before the computer light came on. I stated, on my last flight, just backwards. But if I remember, I think the sequence of events, the malfunction lights came on, I tried to reset that, and then the SAS lights came on. I tried to reset that, and then the SAS lights came on. It would be more logical order though, just reversed. The airplane handled very well on BCS, although for a good stable table you really need that RAS up there.