Post-Flight: 2-53-97

DATE: October 3, 1967

PILOT: Maj. W. Knight

 Well, from the time the whole operation started this morning I figured it. would be a good captive flight. As time went on, I began to realize that everybody is getting serious about this thing, and I tried everything I could, not to go. The only problem was the SAS check. When I went to work we did not get a yaw disengage. I figured, as well us everyone else, that this was part of the check that was malfunctioning and not the SAS system. It had not malfunctioned at all on the way up. It never dropped off or anything, and I was in agreement with the call that we go ahead with the flight. The monitor, it all came off and worked very well coming up to launch. Before that there were some radio problems. I was continuing through the checklist, and I was not sure that Bill was reading me a couple of times there. I don't think that you really were at about three minutes. From four minutes on down to, say two minutes and then I think the next thing we heard was we were "inside the two minute" and "press on, it looks good." So we did, and everything did look good through the launch. The beta needle was out just a little bit farther this time before launch than it has been. It was a good 2° needle left rather than 1.5°. I reached up and hit the launch switch and immediately took my hand off to go back to the throttle and found I had not gone anywhere. It did not launch. So I probably just got my hand off of it, because I reached up and hit it again and it launched the second time. Launch was very smooth this time. It was one of the smoothest launches I have had. I don't remember what the initial angle of attack jumped to, but I caught the airplane very well. The roll control was not as bad as it has been on the last flight, and I had a very good feel for the airplane and pulled it up to 14° and held that for a long time. I then pulled it up to about 15°. We did get a little buffet at around 15°, very minor, but it was there. So then from then on we backed off down to 14° and on down to a good solid 12-13° for the rest of the flight. As we climbed up and got to theta, everything was going very well. I looked at tank pressures one time, and one of the tank pressures was down to 40#. I thought I had better watch that. Then I began to look around at other things and we came up on the tank jettison, standby for the green lights. I went to internal and got a good 5° for tank jettison and hit the button and the tanks went awfully hard. They came off immediately, and then the airplane jumped down to about -2.5° angle of attack. It was awfully hard jettisoning in compared to the last one. It is possible I guess, that the ramjet could have come off here, although I don't have any inclination that it did other than the fact that it was a hard tank jettison. We immediately came back up to the 2° angle of attack and the 80 and 90,000' calls were right on the h dot, and there was no problem leveling off. The one thing that did surprise me was that as we came level I caught the horizon out of the right window, and that startled me for a minute when I saw that. We had the visor up for the sun and left it up throughout the flight. We came level at 99,000' and things were going well. I asked if we were sure it wasn't 100,000'. We did, backing up a little bit, we did get the beta oscillations before we lost the tanks, and it was no more than about 1° at the most. But it was there and it was a good little oscillation. I did not do anything about it. I let it oscillate. Came level at 100,000', accelerated on up and the pitch axis is very sensitive. Coming up to 6° angle of attack to hold a zero h dot, it was most difficult to hold a constant angle of attack. It probably varied from 4° to 7° angle of attack after we came level. We shut down at 6500, and I took careful note to see what the final got to. The engine shut down very slowly today for some reason. It went to 6600 maximum on the indicator. As I told Johnny before, the longest time period is going to be from zero h dot getting it down to 100 to 200' per second starting down hill after shutdown. Sure enough, I went back down to about

2° angle of attack and h dot started down and I came back up to 7° and had the yaw ASAS off. Turned the yaw SAS off and made a rudder pulse and the airplane did not do anything. It moved a little bit but it felt like the frequency was going to be so large that it wasn't going to oscillate at all. It finally came back to neutral. I got the speed brakes out, did another yaw pulse, and the same thing. It wasn't oscillating as we had seen it in the simulator. It appeared to be a little bit deadbeat, and it went out and came back and stopped. Very little oscillation as far as what I noticed in the simulator. We did get a pitch pulse after the speed brakes and a yaw pulse, then the pitch pulse. The pitch axis was about what it was in the simulator. It wasn't bad at all. Sometime in here, well it was after the first trim down after the pitch pulse, then we went to a trim down and right in here is where I got the peroxide compartment hot light I think. I called it out about five seconds after I saw it because I thought maybe it would go out. I am sure I saw it as it came on. I was really pretty well relaxed at this time. Then in trying to watch that peroxide light and get the word from Bill as to what to do about it, this sequence of events changed considerably over the flight plan. There were rudder pulses and trim downs at various times and speeds, and not necessarily what we had planned on. The calls were good and the velocities were matching the calls fairly well. But I could not get an idea of how far north I was. I knew I was high and we had not come down hill as we should have. I knew we would have to leave the speed brakes out, but I could not get the feel for really how far out and how much higher we were, especially when we got down to cross the highway. I suspect we crossed the highway at about Mach 3. Somewhere in here. Was It? Not that high, well. One time when Bill called the distance out I could see Rosamond, and again the calls to make a 15° right turn - it sure did not look like that to me because I could see Rosamond almost dead ahead and that looked good to me. Then finally I rolled it one time to see if we were crossing the highway and North Base and we were just about there. So I don't think we got a full 15° turn in down

there. We may have gotten a little. The eyelid coming open; from that point on we did not get the data we were after. I got the eyelid open and started to turn. I could see where we were. We had good speed at the time. I think we were a little bit late on calling the speed brakes. We should have gotten those in a little bit sooner and I could have made the turn probably a little tighter. But anyway, we ended up on the downwind and I had still about 400 knots indicated and about 370 on one and 400 on the alternate system. So it looked pretty good to me. By the time you called that we "ought to be looking at 23" we were almost over 23 and I thought too close to try and swing out to a downwind and then back into 23, and start it slowing up to get to the end of the lakebed for a 18 landing. Never did hear the Chases nor see them. The right window was almost identical to the last flight at Mach 5. The right window was covered about half of the way back on this one and the visibility was good, straight out but forward not too good. The left one was very clear after we got the window open. We got down to about 16,000 on my altimeter and I could see that we could still bend it around and make 18 whether we landed on the runway or touched down a little bit across the runway. So we continued on to 18. Made the 180° turn and I punched the ramjet, and as I looked out we crossed the railroad but I did not feel it go at all. I did not feel anything when I punched the button for the ramjet. I understand that there were people saw that it did come off and others say that they never saw it, so I don't know where it is. The flare was pretty normal and I did catch myself rolling left again. I think I got that squared away and we did land both gear simultaneously this time. I thought it was a very smooth touchdown. Backing up to high key, when some body called go to jettison, I did go to jettison and I rechecked those three switches down to jettison and nobody saw it. From the looks of things, after we got on the ground it did not jettison. Slideout was pretty normal. There was a little left turn and outside of that no problems. (? Did your green light flicker before you switched to internal?) No, they did not.

The green lights did not flicker, not once. The green lights and low indicators worked very well during the engine start operation. The flow meters came up and the ammonia flow indicator flickered but it pretty well maintained 100%. That is what it done on the last flight. It goes to 100% and stays there. You don't have any idea what it is doing. But it did flicker and come off 100% when we went to the pump. It was, I thought, a pretty good indication that it was working. The green lights flickered and worked solidly as the pump was on and they looked real good. The only thing that was surprising was that the tanks were a little bit harder this time than I had remembered. The airplane moved a lot farther this time I think than it did the last flight. (?) Yes. I don't really think that at that second you could tell whether two tanks came off or one tank comes off. I think that somebody would have to tell you in order that you do something before you reach 2.5. I think finally you could pretty well tell that one did not come off. But I don't think that if you hit the button and one of them went; unless it would give you a lot more roll than I think it would and then some steady state conditions after that with the one tank hanging on. It is just hard to tell whether you could discern this or not. (?) I did not arm it at South Base. It is armed right after take-off. You just check it at high key, but it is already armed. So I just look over and make sure that it is armed and then when I cross the highway I push the button. But I did not feel a thing. I could just barely feel it on the last flight. But I think there should be something there when it goes off. I don't really think it was there unless you found it out there. (? .......... longitudinal control task above Mach 5?) Yes. The longitudinal control task is a little bit more difficult than it appears in the simulator because it is so sensitive, and you don't really need any trim to control it. You put it someplace and it appears to stay there all right. There was very little force. It is just a little loose in pitch. Not that I thought at any time that I was going to lose the airplane, but it is extremely sensitive. (?) No. No problem there because I run into buffet before I get into anything else. There were a couple of times, in the turn, in trying to get it turned around here that I got into buffet and I had to back off on it. When you called "you are going sub-sonic, watch your alpha" I was down around 12°. Wasn't really that high. (?) Yes. No. I would say it was zero. Velocity and h dot were both zero. Heading was 170. I really did not think we were that far off on heading all the way down. Every time I looked at the heading we were pretty close on heading, and that was why I really could not figure out how we got so far off down at the end - wanted 15°. I might add .......... and I felt very comfortable with the airplane and that is why I was talking so much during the boost phase. I was, I thought, right on it and was having no problem at all holding what I thought was a good profile. (?) Yes. It stayed at 100% and as I remember, it did the same thing on the last flight. Isn't that right, Bill? No. No. The ammonia flow, yes, yes, but it is the helium flow indicator on the ammonia tank. The minute we do anything to those tanks those lights start flickering, and they flicker until it steadies down and then they are steady all the time. The Lox tank, it does the same thing as the lights. It finally steadies down about 75% flow. It looks almost like the last window that we came back with and everybody said it was the tape off the pitot head, but it looks almost like the same stuff. It is a little bit more in a liquid condition than the droplets that we saw in the last flight, but it is there. I don't think, in looking at it after this one, that it will ever become all the way back so solid that you might not be able to see the horizon.(?) No. We angled in a little bit to the runway, and I looked at 23 and looked at 18 and I could see making a short cut on 18 easier than I could at that point getting around to landing on 23. As it turned out I am glad we did that because from the time we started the turn around to 18 I could not see the runway at all. We started the turn on 18 from about 15,000' and the minute I got into over 60° of bank I could not see the runway at all. (?) I was looking at the edge of the lakebed on the lake and knew that the runway had to be there pretty soon, and was within about 30° of rolling out on final, as I started to roll out then I could see the runway. I cross checked them both quite a bit, and there was only about 4O knots difference between the two systems. The standard system was reading lower than the alternate system. They were pretty constant all the way around on this one. Just about 40 knots difference. Pitch damper was not working! Oh, the light wasn't on. So, I would say if that was the case it flies all right without the pitch damper. Oh, well - I don't know. I don't think you can extrapolate that well and say that it would be any worse or any better without the pitch damper, because you would not be doing the same things without the pitch damper.