November 15, 1963

We didn't have any problems except for a slight delay in the pilot reaching the physiological trailer. No strain on prelaunch operations until we got the call about having lost radar at both control sites. Now to get the funny remarks out of the road first. I wished McKay had not come on with these depressing adversities about 348,000 when you are shooting for 360,000, kind of makes a fellow feel like stepping off the wing. Just doesn't put in the right frame of reference for doing the reentry. Well, I certainly appreciate everybody's struggle and effort for the past 3 weeks to keep up in the business with the flying machine and flying practice. Rest assured during the climbout I played the game. That's our phrase on the simulator now no matter what they do play the game so that's what I did in the airplane and the results are an outcome of what I did in accordance with the presentation aspects that I had. Item 1, I had 2g's right on the money on 11 seconds. Item 2, 30 seconds goes by and I'm not within 10° of theta but vernier hadn't come off the peg and the attitude ball hadn't come up towards 50° so I yanked back on the nose and quick got it up there. Went charging on. This occurred about 55,000 when I finally got it on theta. At 70,000' by the altimeter the predictor read 135,0000. At 100,000' having dumped the nose a little to allow a little slack on this thing I hadn't reached 90 yet when predictor went by I just passed 90, sorry when the predictor went by 170,000' so there goes that check still reading high and I put these two together with how long it took to get up to theta and decided that I wasn't sure what was wormy but we weren't going to 400,000' anyhow. And a considerable amount of adjusting went on. I got the nose back up on indicated theta I knew it didn't make much change at this point. We actually came out reasonably good on 150,000' with 290,000' predictor altitude. I went buzzing on up and I kept tuning out these calls about being low on theta when on. The engine burned out when I had my hand on the throttle waiting for altitude and velocity to come up, just as the predictor hit 362,000 and it moved real smooth the whole time. It wound up and gradually increased its rate of progression as per standard so the rest of the flight certainly was a result of all these business in the climb. Unfortunately for the whole business the predictor promptly did exactly the same thing as we have seen occasionally in the simulator. It decided it didn't like the number that it read the first time and proceeded to back its way down to 352,000 just about the time the airplane altimeter went to 352,000. I became aware as we went higher and higher, (incidentally I hit the CSS button 3 times instead of the microphone but felt that I was level and on heading real good). Got on the microphone finally but as we progressively got higher and higher we progressively got more and more into a right hand bank angle and it felt like it was not only drifting over, but there wasn't any action about coming back when I cranked the control handle in. I held full left and it kept drifting toward the right so I grabbed the BCS handle and righted the thing heading real good all this time. Tried punching the CSS button at level but it didn't do anything it still drifted to the right. Tried manual BCS selection off the Minneapolis Honeywell; no change. Went back to automatic, still no change and all this time, of course, I'm doing the problem with the manual control handle, and finally on the way down I discovered that the pitch wasn't coming up on BCS. I brought it up with the manual BCS control and it came up smartly and we bobbled a little bit. I barely got up in the vicinity of alpha when q started coming on we had some joggles that I attempted to help with manual. I thought I had turned off the Minneapolis Honeywell BCS in order to avoid bucking each other but I still found it in the automatic position when I finished the roundout. I'm reasonably positive that about the only BCS action from MH system that I got was directional. Probably some to the right in roll but uncontrolled and I was damping in directional a few times and in pitch and holding laterally with the manual ballistic control system. Soon as I got dynamic pressure I ceased from that and went ahead with the aerodynamic control system. The comment of previous flights that this is one big squeeze in the pullout is still good. Doc's arm squeezer and Richard's leg and gut were working in harmony. There weren't any more problems associated with control or maneuvering or energy management from the time that I was able to drop off on g the rest of the way home. We wound up obviously a little low on flight path angles that put us further down stream. It came as no surprise to go by China Lake about 300 feet per second faster than we had anticipated. There wasn't any trouble getting rid of it. Had no problems reading the vertical velocity down there in the center panel on the right hand side of that stick and cross checking with the other gages. I think I got a zero error landing touchdown. I might add that I was impressed that this Minneapolis BCS deteriorated aggressively because it was pitching the nose down as I was approaching the top up there unless I had just initiated enough downward drift to carry it on through but it gave out on me when I wanted to let the nose back even though I had in excess of two on the pitch rate. Maximum nose down angle was going by -30° of theta by the attitude indicator and that's when I decided that's far enough. The only thing I noticed was the same old bit that the initiation onset of g have to watch jiggling pitch stick or you will get yourself a surge with a flip flop on stabilizer. As soon as you hold steady on that it smoothes right out.