I'm not sure whether I can give a full, complete, authoritative comparison of this system to the SAS system or not. In some ways I liked it and in some ways I did not like it. I liked it in several respects, particularly in the climbs and the glides.

It was real easy to engage the holds. I neglected to engage a Hold before drop, but it engaged after drop with no strain. I didn't detect any overshoot and I didn't use the roll knob. I thought it was a little more sensitive right after launch, it seemed to jiggle left and right. I even got carried away with that to the point that I almost forgot what I was supposed to do after launch (namely start the engine) I bobbed up and down just like on the simulator trying to home in on a. First thing that happened I automatically got to 10°a and then I was down below it and above it, sort of like riding the old range until I finally got it on beam. It wasn't hard to hold once I got steadied down on it.

I had gotten a little nervous about the angle of attack that I was flying, I read only 5° on the calibrated a gauge when I was centered on the horizontal cross needle. When the q came up to 1,000 psf, pulled on up to about 7°a and observed at this point that my g was about 2.8.

The lateral residual I did not like. This was way beyond anything we've ever had, to my knowledge with SAS 8-6-8. I couldn't pick up anything that I could really attribute to the yaw channel. I had a small shudder, just an awareness that something was going on at the peak q and the highest a. I thought this might have possibly been yaw, but it did not persist. It may have been the gain cutback, I only noticed about 2 of those and they were really more associated with an abrupt pitch input, the same as on the simulator where you get chatter out of the control system, rather than from the gain change. In the whole flight I wasn't really aware of critical gain cutback.

I thought that the pitch hold mode was interesting but not really necessary inasmuch as I was fairly smooth with the hand, control system. The pitch vernier indicator was sensing backwards. It came up from the bottom instead of down from the top. I was steady on 30°q initially, and then I went gazing at other things and came back to the indicator and found it on the lower side of zero. I just automatically set the nose toward the needle and, this put the needle further away. I had to crank back in the other direction. By this time, we were so close to pushover that I just held on and went on down to zero angle of attack. I think the trim follow-up on the longitudinal control is probably the greatest advantage of the whole system. I like it over the top where it gives you low stick forces.

We possibly had one or two reaction control firings up there. I heard a noise that I thought was nose rocket while climbing.

It was real steady on the pitch hold on top and the trim follow-up came on as the angle of attack came up while holding the attitude. I turned pitch hold off and held 10°a manually. When I did the yaw pulse I didn't get the droop in a, it stayed right there. There were about 3 cycles of small magnitude.

I went on up in angle of attack and I noted a tendency toward directional movement as I got up to 15°. I thought that the trim follow-up didn't work this time because I set a on 15°, and with the same control setting, it dipped back to about 12° or 10°. I had to do the whole job all over again, and really hold it up there before it would stay put at 15°. There was a lateral directional wobble at 15°a. I put in a small amount of turn to correct for being to the right of course during this.

The entry "g" came up but I didn't get limiting. I don't know what this might have been. It did seem reasonable since at maximum a I read under 4g. It continued onward after coming up level and I checked with Bob and my vertical velocity was coming up to about 200 ft/sec down and we seemed reasonably flat. He confirmed that we had more or less leveled out. I went down to about 1g and turned pitch and roll to fixed gain. This was on the order of 7° to 8° of angle of attack and I'm convinced that with all three on fixed gain, it is not equivalent by any means to the SAS 8-6-8. It gives a little more lateral operation along with the directional than we have been having with the SAS. Not too bad, but it seemed like it was looser and had more tendency to oscillate there than I had been accustomed to lately. It wasn't unexpected to me except for the lowness of the angle of attack that this thing seemed to wobble around as much as it did. This gave me a comparative basis that we would have been getting at 12, maybe not quite that high.

I got a pitch pulse right off the bat. I over-controlled the pitch is what started the oscillations that's why I say I got a pitch pulse right off the bat. I did the directional pulse and this seemed to go into a roll oscillation more than a directional oscillation. Then I wanted to see where I was so it was real handy doing a 30 to 30 roll. It went real smooth, just using the roll control without having to hold any trim.

I reset the adaptive dampers, put the brakes out and went down to about zero g. I had lateral residual with the speed brakes out, coasting all the way down. I had the lateral residual above Mach 1, and about 1.3 and 1.4.