Date: September 8, 1966

Pilot: John B. McKay

Really, as far as the pre-launch, there's really no comment there. Mike's call of starting APU's a little early really helped on that inertial. It would be a good idea to continue that if we want. Actually he had already made his turn when I went to external. Got the computer and the gross malfunction light but they reset. Just before I hit the pump I went to Delta Psi on the heading vernier. We were reading about .5° right yaw and as soon as I went to Delta Psi it centered itself very nicely.

The launch was without any incident. I don't remember too much of a roll off. I do remember cranking on 12-15° of trim, and I looked up and I felt like I was a little on the edge of buffet. My angle of attack was indicating around 13°, and settled back down to about 10 - 11. During the climb out I was really using that heading vernier to keep on course, and evidently it was working pretty well. Just about that time I looked down, I was making some little roll corrections to come back on course; I would overshoot slightly and come back in. That's when I first noticed that I had a fuel low line light, down on the panel. I throttled back, after looking at it for a few seconds, I throttled back. That did not seem to do any good, but actually that light locks in, it does not come out. About that time I took a fast look behind my shoulder and saw Smith's Ranch going by, and I shut down, made a right turn at the same time trying to kill off my H dot that I had acquired. I believe I went up to around 70,000, and as I started my turn I saw Mach 2 or 2.2 go by. It took a little while to get back down to get a little q to where we could dig in, and get a turn but from there on it was just a normal landing.

Johnny did a good job and Mike controlling the chasing. Other than that I don't have any, before I left the bird and got on the 130, I looked around, I could not see any evidence of fuel leaking out. But I don't really know what caused this sort of thing. I just did not feel like I wanted to come home with this thing staring me in the face. The bird was not injured. I figured we touched down about 190 - 200. The left front tire evidently is flat. There is no air in it. The other one is OK, I don't know whether this happened on landing. The landing appeared to be very normal. If anything, the rotation after touchdown did not appear to be as backbreaking as some of the rest of them out here. I think we can get the bird back and turn it around and fly it. That's all I have. Everything was just straight work.

? When I called jettison I went right into it, right then. ? That's right, Stan. I just changed all the power when the starters turned, and the light came on about 10 seconds after that but immediately reset. ? We may have to hit a happy medium on that BCS check. A couple of flights ago, when we had a leak it took, it just ate up every bit of that time, we overlapped into the other one. The reason I went to 15 minutes, that if we had a leaky valve we could work at it for a few seconds.