PILOTS COMMENTS

Flight 3-12-22

December 14, 1962

Pilot: Major Robert White

OK, in pre-launch the radio communications I thought were excellent, all the way through, I never had any problem. The only time I thought I might have, is when I called Jack to make sure he was hearing me because I didn't get a very quick response after we were on the inbound heading to launch. And in fact several minutes before when I switched to my radio but it was OK, Jack was probably in conference with someone. So the radio communication was beautiful.

The cabin pressure, I'm just wondering if we have a situation I think I talked about once before in this airplane, we hold 36,000 feet in there and this is before I got pressure cooling on and so forth, it holds 36,000, and it doesn't change. It keeps enough pressure in the suit to make it a little uncomfortable, you like to finally get to the point where the suit just collapses, you just don't have the pressure. It sits right there, the cabin pressure indicator, at 36, just a hair over 36 and I was checking the cabin pressure on the way up with the altitude calls from the B-52, it was matching it perfectly. He called 15, 20, 25, and that's exactly what the cabin altitude read. So it looks like it was just about 1,000 feet high. If it were set to regulate just down a little bit lower it probably would match the suit perfectly and keep away from that suit blow up. Its not objectionable until time 13 minutes when you would like it to go back down, because there's a couple of straps on the shoulders and after a while it feels like you can't straighten up against it without your neck feeling like its coming off.

OK, we get down here in the check list from about 11 minutes on, there was enough things added and thrown and played with in the check list by the time I got finished scratching this thing up, it could lead to confusion. It started to yesterday and I was a little bit ahead of it today, but maybe the next time we fly, we can get the check list a little bit better co-ordinated and finalized before we get the thing all hashed up. Now I didn't get a burst on the flap cycle because when I talked to Fischel and he said it wouldn't make any difference if we just cycle the flaps at some intermediate point where we have a check that they're coming down and then throw them back up, so I left that out. 0K, the engine oscillograph I did do that for the people as they requested. It went on at 7 minutes, it went back off again, right after we got our data calibrate before we pressurized the LN tanks. I guess that the analyzer check was satisfactory, was it? We fished around and seemed to get through it all right. OK, everything looked real good though all the way right up to the launch. The flight itself went ahead and launched, got a good light right off, the chamber pressure came up to about 565 indicated, 570 indicated, right in that area. We went on out. I had a lot of trouble with the sun coming down from that area, because you know this time of year the sun is down the southern half of the sky and when you launch going up into it, it really makes a difference, so you fly with your hand held up like this such as we have done in the past. It really impresses you when you think back to the last I flew when I launched from Delamar and in the summer time and the sun was behind you and it makes a world of difference. I got on to 2 g in the rotation a lot quicker then I appeared to in the simulator, it seemed that I could get the 2 g a lot faster, although I was low on the angle of attack for awhile. I guess which initially put us out a little low on the profile. Then at about 26 or 27 seconds on my clock, I pushed on over to 2° and went on up. Now the first thing that came along on the flight plan which threw me, which I didn't expect from the simulation, was where we extend the speed brakes to 20°. In the simulator we do this very neatly at 70 seconds, in the airplane by this time you have a longitudinal g lever that pins you to the back of the seat, and you can't move your head to look down at the speed brake indicator to tell how much deflection you're going to get. Well you can use your hands all right, so I went ahead and at 70 seconds pulled on back on the speed brakes as it turned out I hit just about exactly 20° anyway just from feel. But that's a good point I think, in our planning, at that time, I don't care who it is, he's not going to be able to see it, because you can't take your head away from the head rest.

Question: What should we do if the speed brake must come out of it very early in profile or at engine shutdown?

White: I don't know what you want to do. If you could modify either the flight plan, we take this into account at the necessary place, I don't know what you consider, I hate to think of putting a détente down there, something that's going to compromise your ability to run back and forth with the speed brakes, but its a point anyway, we can think about now.

 OK, shutdown came, I charted off the time, and just as it went through 5400 fps, I pulled the throttle on back and shutdown. I did this on the inertial velocity indicator. I pulled on up and it looked like it was going to take forever to get the airplane pitched up, but got 20°. I gave it a lateral pulse and it was kind of a weak one, in anticipation of what I had seen in the simulator and looked like it only moved out to about 3 or 4° of sideslip and came right back, went out and came back. It impressed me as being a lot tighter than the simulator and I just sort of rocked the stick back and forth a ]little bit and I didn't get any excursions that were disturbing at all in sideslip. Then I pulled it on up, just rocking the wings a little bit as I went on up in angle of attack, and I got to a maximum of 23°, that was what I read on my indicator. I hit it again, and again it looked like it went out to 3-4° of sideslip and came right on back. The pulse wasn't as sharp as many I've given in the simulator run so it went on out and came back, no tendency to overshoot and go through even one cycle, well not more than one cycle. Little wing rocking as I increased up to 25° back and forth, just a slight wandering but it seemed much tighter than it did in the simulator, seemed very good to me. No tendency to frighten me as far as what was going on. So that was satisfactory, I felt that under the right conditions or increasing q for instance, I could have just held the thing up there at high angle of attack and stayed right with it, flying it. Didn't disturb me a bit. Then I backed on off and came down and held about 15° angle of attack rather than going down to about 11 and switched over to delta psi, essentially zero sideslip and it displaced a little bit, indicating a correction back to the left and this seemed to work fine. I liked it. I went ahead and used directional control. I could hear and see the reaction controls operating, and it looked like something that I think is very desirable in a region where we are going to lose the sideslip. It would correct back, and respond just about the way I would like, it wasn't squirrelly, and I kind of liked it. I think we ought to stick with and look at some more, because when you get to very high altitude again, you're going to feel an acute lack of some reference for direction and I think this is good to have this thing, it looks real fine. I kept the delta psi on, played with it a bit and went over, and kept it on just a little bit longer than your call to switch to standby. Question: How long were you on delta psi?

White: I must have been more than a half a minute, as the flight plan called for something like 48 seconds. I imagined I might have come close to that. Then when I started, after I had peaked out and started on back down, I flipped it over, back to b and had a very small sideslip indication, and continued on from there. The inertial height indicator showed about 143,000.

 On the way down, I got 2 g, I think, as I indicated when I called this out, quite a bit faster than I did in the simulator, seemed that I was able to get 2 g rather easily. I had 18° indicated on the stabilizer leading edge down, and of course, this is quite a bit less, I never came near the stabilized deflections that we did in the simulator. About 120 or 115,000, I went ahead and switched reaction control auto back to off and it indicated between 300 and 400 fps (h-dot -300/400 fps). I closed the speed brakes, increased the angle of attack up to about 14°, gave it a pulse and I might just as well not have done it because it gave just a little lick and was right back dead beat, practically no action at all there. Then I went ahead and opened up speed brakes again and played around for the field. Now when I came back down and was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800 fps, (1800-2000 fps), little over 50,000 was where I started getting this high frequency, low amplitude oscillation, primarily a snaking, because it was beating back and forth directionally at a fairly good rate. That's when I called this thing out, perhaps with more emphasis than was necessary. I didn't want to give anybody any concern, but I just wanted you to be aware that this thing was happening there. This is limit cycling of course, again I had never experienced in this particular situation, only on the exit right after launch so it was unusual to have it happen in this place.

The maneuvering for the pattern was fairly routine, I think we checked everything that we were supposed to check. Engaging the MH cutout was simply engaging the circuit breaker, nothing else involved in doing that.

On the landing, came flaps down, the gear came out at about 250 knots . At about 210 knots, Capt. Knight gave me a call that said 2 foot proximity to the ground, however, I had to maintain a fairly steady rate of descent up to this time, so I decided then that I wanted touchdown softer than this so I hauled the gun back a little more and held it off and I'm sure that the touchdown velocity must have been 185, no higher than 185, I'm guessing now, but somewhere probably in this area and it felt like a nice light touchdown. As soon as I felt the skids skipping along, I jammed the stick right up against the stop and held it there. The nose impact, my impression was that it came down pretty hard, but I suppose this is probably kidding myself because I'm helping shove it down and then it's been five months since I felt it, so you always have this impression that it's a pretty hard impact. I immediately reached over to disengage SAS, while I was doing this I looked down and, of course, the switches were all down and the lights were out, so apparently the squat circuit had worked just as it was supposed to.

Right after touchdown, I started sliding off the center line of the runway and I can't tell whether or not I picked up this yaw angle at the touchdown or I had some angle of displacement from center line, I don't know. I was past the aim touchdown point a little bit, but not too awfully far I don't think. OK, fifteen feet! I really though it would be about 215 feet! Then the airplane slid out and by the time I got to the left runway line why then it just turned slightly back to the right and straightened out. It was almost immediately, and as I say it didn't impress me that the airplane yawed, I thought that perhaps it might have been a little bit, but I thought perhaps I've got some angle from the runway center line at touchdown and that was it.