Pilot: William Dana

Date: October 24, 1968

Flight 1-81 was flown on 24 October. Once again just about as smooth a flight as we have had. We took off and Ted Sturmthal hit North Base within seconds, maybe it was John Miller, whoever was flying. I can't think of a hitch all the way out. The radio checks were good. We never got behind on the count. Everything went just like clockwork. We came off the shackles as advertised. I had a little trouble getting my alpha, and I had the distinct feeling that my alpha gage was sticky, although it could have been just as we were going through the transonic range. I had 10 alpha so I put in another degree's worth and the needle did not move so I put in about 3° worth and the needle did not move. Then pretty soon I looked down and we had it. So I think maybe the alpha stuck there a little bit. Pete's calls were good. The radio was fine. He asked me to check my heading. My heading wasn't the world's best but I got it around the way I wanted it and eventually got the needle lined up. But then as we went higher and higher we got more and more and more thrust misalignment. The ball nose told me we have thrust misalignment and computed beta told me we had thrust misalignment, and I did not believe it because I could not feel the side loads and I did not get any low .......... I said well I am not going to stick a yard of rudder in and correct something that I don't believe is really happening. I did not do a thing and it shut down and we did not seem to get much of a yaw correction. I got RAS on and started alpha down. In fact, going through 180,000 the alpha was zero. Then somebody made the mistake of saying "do you see a missile". I got to admiring his profile so much I ruined my own. From then on my tracking got pretty poor. Alpha went back up and finally over the top I had everything under control. But everything looked good going across the top except the light that said the experiment was up wasn't on, and I did not think the experiment was up. Then Pete called me at peak altitude and told me to retract it, and then I figured he did not think the experiment was up. Sure enough, when I turned the experiment switch off the "doors open" light went out immediately indicating that the experiment was not up and I felt no clunk so I personally am convinced that the experiment was not up. I suppose this will show up on my cockpit camera film. Coming down my tracking was not anything like I would have liked to have had it. My alpha control was poor, to be generous to me, but we got it down and then by about 130,000 everything was under control. Alpha stayed up where it was supposed to be, and until I got as many g's as I personally wanted, which was about 4.5, and we entered and landed. I had more time coming home from 80 miles out today than I have ever had in my life. I sight saw, gave chase vectors and did everything but talk to the bomber pilots. Then eventually we hit the traffic pattern and landed. I did get a computer light somewhere over the top and I don't know just exactly where it was. I know we were way up there. I saw the computer light and while I had time I punched it out. The inertials from Pete's call certainly looked well within my limits, although we were at 10,000' of altitude after slideout which probably isn't that significant. The question was "did I turn all three RAS's on"? I very definitely did, Jack. I turned yaw on immediately, roll when I had it under control and pitch when I got zero alpha. The next question, "was my heading good since the heading on the track is poor"? I may have misanalyzed this Jack, but I think that could be attributed to the thrust misalignment. You could have the heading of the airplane lined up perfectly and if you got several degrees thrust misalignment it is going to blow you off track. Computed beta lined up very well with ball nose beta. I could have flown computed beta if I believed it, but by the time I got to shutdown, and I could not figure whether I had thrust misalignment or not, Jack, it did not matter why I had all these strange things before burnout. The thing was to get the yaw centered and I had centered the precision yaw needle, precision heading needle and went on over the top. (?) No. I definitely remember checking on my directional needle between 180 and 200 thou. Yaw heading did not agree but computed beta and beta did agree. I tried to tell Pete that the engine burned at 88 seconds but the clock showed that it burned for five minutes and 88 seconds. Inference there could be that the clock did not stop when the engine did.