Post-Flight:

Post-Flight: 2-52-96

DATE: August 21, 1967

PILOT: Maj. W. Knight

Everything in the checklist went real well. Radio checks were all good. Everything was good through the launch. Launched, lit the engine, 100%. Looked down and I had about 13 or 14° alpha when it settled out. I brought it back down to 10. Then started squaring away on the heading. Made a couple of corrections in the heading. I over corrected one time and then came back to it. Alpha, I thought was running a little bit lower than normal. Probably averaged out about 9°. Got on theta. Theta probably was running a little high. As we came up on altitude then, and Bill started to count off from 57, I already decided that h dot was going to be the important factor. So I was watching that pretty close, and as Bill started to call off I was approaching 900' per second h dot. When he said 57, I pushed over because I had 900 h dot and I figured that if we go any farther to 63 it is going to go way high. So we pushed over at that time and then when Bill called 80,000 I was right on 600' per second which is what we were supposed to have. It came level at what Bill called 90,000 and I figured that is the only way to do it. If we had waited until 63,000 I don't know where we'd have gone. (What did your altitude read?) 9,0,000 right on the button. (At pushover?) Oh, at the pushover it was reading about 57,000 about the same thing that Bill was calling. We pushed over at the engine shutdown and I was still watching the profile pretty good and I did not catch the time on shutdown. It was over 5,000' per second, and that was really all I was concerned with. It shut down and I got the speed brakes out and waited a little bit and it came down. The h dot came through zero. We came up to 7° alpha and got the pitch pulse in low gain, yaw pulse, low gain, back to pitch and back to yaw and there really was not much to see as far as the pulses on the airplane. It was almost like it was in the simulator. Maybe a little slower than the simulator, although it damped out pretty good in pitch and yaw; only it seemed a little slower in frequency. When Bill called 37 or 3800, I forget what it was, I (3800) already had my hand on the speed brakes and was bringing them in because again that is what we were doing in the simulator having them in by 3700. From then on the airplane did not seem to slow down as much as it did in the simulator, because I went through a trim change, went up to 10°, went back down to zero, and then started back up to 10° and I was still doing about 35 - 3600' per second. It did not seem to want to slow down so I waited a little bit and decided I am going to have to go ahead and get the pulses because if I wait until three we are going to miss the other one. So I went back up to 10° and got the yaw pulse and it was pretty close to the simulator. I'd say it was approaching neutral at about 9°. I let it go for about two cycles and stopped it. Then came back down to about 5 or 6° because the h dot was coming to zero. Got another pulse and again the airplane still was not slowing down and Bill was calling the distances out and we were getting closer and closer to the lakebed. So I went ahead and got the pitch pulse and that pretty well approached the simulator. It was almost just like the simulator. Got the eyelid open at 2 5 - 2 4 and again we got the slight pitch, roll and yaw out of the eyelid. At this time I looked out of the right window and I could see it was fogged up a little bit in the forward part of it and it looked more streaked like there was water on it rather than a .......... smooth film as we have seen on the other test pieces. I could see out of the right side from about the quarter point - the last three quarters of it was pretty clear. There were some streaks across it that got that far back, but most of it was in the forward corner of the glass. I rolled it left to find the lakebed and I looked down and we were just past the lake but it still looked good. Pulled it around to just about three g's and was trying to hold it as level as I could. We got down to about, well we started about a little over 400 knots indicated, and it came down to about 300 and then trim, pitch trim change was pretty apparent in here. I did notice that I had to trim it down considerably and at one point I noticed that it was coming up pretty close to what I would call buffet. It felt like it was just going to be there. We flew the airplane around on to the downwind, and still holding about 300 knots on the standard tube. I had the other one open and it was reading much higher - about 350 or so. Then when we started down on the downwind, Mike called out 400 knots and on secondary or the extendible pitot tube I had about 370-375 and the other one was down to about 300. So then I decided that

one was not going to be any good. Coming around the pattern I slowed it up to about 350-360 on the extendible one. The other one was reading down around 280-290. On the final I had 350 on the extendible one and the other one was 270. (?) I don't remember where that one was. (?) Well, we were on the base then, that's about where I was holding it 350-360. I used some speed brakes around the pattern and headed right for the edge of the lake really not worrying about where the touchdown was because if we were holding a high speed and it did not have the drag then it was going to float a long ways. If it was not going to float we still would not be short. We touched down about, maybe a little over a quarter of a mile short of the two mile mark. I think the windows effected the touchdown a little bit because I touched down the left gear first. Very noticeably on the left gear. As far as touchdown speed, I can't give you a touchdown speed but it felt like it was a little slower than normal. It may not have been but it felt like it. The nose came down pretty hard. It rolled out straight and then we got caught in a rut someplace out there. It felt like the nose gear got caught in a rut and the airplane was like this - and it finally crossed the rut and straightened out and then we went pretty well straight all the way down. It came out 174-175 I believe after we stopped. I could not tell any difference really in the way the airplane flew. Maybe slightly different in the pattern from 40,000 on down, but again it might have been because I was trying to hold it, maintain the highest altitude I could until we got around the downwind and we were flying it fairly slow for that g level and altitude. 300 knots we finally got down to and there was some slight buffet and a little wing rock after we got into the buffet. But no other differences as far as I could tell in flying the airplane. (?) Well you really can't tell about that in the simulator, but I would say pretty close as far as what I can tell. Now the energy in the drag there is no way I could tell about anything like this. (?) No, in the turn after the. eyelids were opened I could not sense any yaw. There may have been a steady state yaw in there, but I could not feel it. If there was, it was so small that it was undetectable and I don't refer back to the gage as to try and take that out in the pattern. It is mostly visual and if it feels like it is flying straight then that is the way it is. Not that I know of. (?) Yes, in chasing the airplane before I have seen the rudder off this much many times and it has never been of any concern. (?) No. No moisture on the outside of the eyelid window. The eyelid window was clear and was very good. The left one. I went around and looked at it and it looked like it was more of a liquid than what we have seen on the test glass under the lower ventral. (?) Well this looked more like a liquid that was running in maybe a sap type liquid. You could see through it but I don't think you could use it. The thing that was usable was the fact that you were getting some peripheral out of the rest of the window. But I did use the left window for the landing and definitely looked out of that window and I think that is why we got the left gear down a little bit just before touchdown. (?) No. I don't think it flew any different. There may have been a little bit of difference in the drag because we did fly a higher pattern, and we flew a faster pattern and we still hit at around the two mile mark. So obviously there must be some difference in the airplane but as far as the handling qualities, anything noticeable in the control of the airplane - no difference.