Pilot - Rushworth
b. Magnitude of the control inputs required to trim the airplane following launch - I'm sure I didn't even get a chance to trim more than one or two times and I had a good angle of attack and I was real pleased about it so that when I spoke to Jack at about 7 or 8 seconds, everything was going along so good I couldn't figure out why he wasn't talking to me already. When he spoke to me at about 10 seconds I had everything, all the conditions that I saw on the simulator, I had 1 g, above 10° angle of attack and it was 10 seconds and these all matched up real well, and it was about that time that I made one small correction in roll. The forces in the airplane are significantly lighter than on the simulator and the lateral stability and damping is better in the airplane than on the simulator so that I didn't think there was any problem at all.
"Do you think you could be confusing this with sensitivity, more sensitivity in the longitudinal control now?" No. The lateral characteristics were better than I saw on the simulator. It was more stable, had better damping than I'd been seeing on the simulator. I didn't really believe the simulator, but I thought, well, it could be as bad as that.
No, I didn't think the control was sensitive at all, I just made one small correction and actually the airplane flew with the lower ventral on just about the way I would expect the airplane to fly clean with the ventral off. Now, the flight that I did with the ventral on, and it'd been so long since I'd flown one I complained about the airplane being sensitive in roll and we decided it was because the lower ventral was giving me all that help. Well, now it feels like it's the clean airplane without the lower ventral. Laterally, it's not quite as sensitive and it's just a little easier to control.
c. a
and dh
trim characteristics - I thought the angle of attack and the
trim conditions on the stabilizer were exactly what I'd seen on the simulator
and I wasn't concerned at all when I got up to 12 and 13 degrees angle
of attack.
I thought the airplane has at least the stability that I'd seen on the simulator, perhaps a little bit better. Now, this could be masked by the way I fly the simulator versus the way I fly the airplane. I know when I fly the airplane, I don't trim. In the simulator I do trim, and this leaves me with a down force or getting away from having an out of trim condition nose down, so that if it was neutrally stable the condition would be to come back to a lower angle of attack. I think all pilots fly that way. "Pulling force?" Pulling rather than trimming, so that it would have been probably another few seconds before I'd reach zero force on the airplane. I didn't get to the point in the profile I'd seen on the simulator, where if I went to 12 or l3 deg angle of attack I could trim out and then the airplane continually needed just a little more trim as I went on out in Mach number. I would say about 1 degree of stabilizer and I've been watching this on the simulator and I didn't get to that point in the flight, but from everything I saw on the other tank flight, everything is there and it's a real good simulation except that the simulator is a little less steady than the airplane. The airplane flies better.
3. Please comment on a controllability during the roundout and the initial climb.
Alpha: 2, theta, no rating, because I didn't get up to anything, but I couldn't see that that was going to be much different than what I saw in the simulator either. Roll (with damper on) and yaw (with damper on) 1 or 1 1/2. I couldn't see any problem except I did have to make one input and there wasn't any problem at all.
During the next significant thing, the pilot rating for q on tank jettison I would say would be about 4 1/2. That's just the airplane dynamics. But I couldn't make any control inputs to do any good, so this is just the stability of the airplane. Roll 2, yaw 1 1/2.
"Consider now that portion as you approached the jettison point before you actually punched the tank off. It won't match your profile or angle of attack, but controllability at zero alpha, and then as you pulled up to the jettison point, any difference there?" No. That whole sequence would be in the same pilot rating. The first pilot rating.
2. Compare tank jettison transients observed on the flight and on the simulator.
The tank drop, when he told me that I had to get rid of the tanks, the first thing that I did was to push right over to a level attitude, actually I came level and then looked at the angle of attack. It was zero and I just eased back on that a, switched the flow from external to internal tanks and reached up and punched the tanks off. I kinda got the impression intuitively that I was in the right condition for tanks drop, with exception of the throttle. I had at least one g, angle of attack was good, and I wasn't even concerned about the q, I just wanted to get rid of the tanks.
The sharpness of the tanks going off was quite impressive, I didn't really think that they were going to move the airplane as much as they did. It was sharper in both roll and pitch than tanks coming off empty. At least the airplane got more of a jolt out of the tanks coming off full, or near full. But the stability system handled it real well and it was so fast that I couldn't have made an input until the thing was all finished. I think I'd gone through 1 1/2 maybe 2 cycles before I realized the airplane was pitching quite violently. But it didn't bother a bit.
The simulator tank jettison is not anywhere close to what the airplane went through. The simulator shows almost deadbeat. A half-cycle overshoot under the same condition. So it's way off there. "Damping way off?" Yeah. I would say that this is probably because.... "Have you done this case on the simulator?" Oh yeah.
Punching them off at 5 degrees angle of attack on the simulator takes it down to about a -1 degree angle of attack and it stops at zero. The simulator keeps up with it a lot better than the airplane did.
3. Please rate the average overall piloting task for the tanks on portion of the flight. (Include transients from the tank jettison.)
As far as going to 1.5 Mach number for what I saw, I was real pleased that the airplane handled as well as it did. I don't think there is any controllability problem at all there. This is through the initial round out and pulling up to 13° angle of attack. No I don't think there is any problem at all.
4. Is there any portion of the boost to which you would assign a more adverse pilot rating than those already discussed?
During the simulator work I was concerned that two things, one the requirement to use left rudder to keep the airplane at zero sideslip, which increased the roll or aileron requirement, and this quits when you come off the angle of attack. I was also concerned about the fact that after we got to a certain Mach number we would begin to pickup the requirement for right rudder in that airplane, that as we went out in temperature, got a higher temperature, that it might have a requirement to hold rudder. "That's the clean airplane." Yeah. After the tanks are off. But I didn't get to the point of seeing any of these little tasks that I'd been concerned about.