Well, like Vince said, everything went normal until servicing started. I think that's last Thursday servicing started. On the way out I wasn't aware of what was going on in the way of getting support planes and everything. All the checks within the X-15 looked like they were going normally. The #l hydraulic system stuck for I would say 3 or 4 seconds at zero and then broke loose and came up. When the #2 fired up, it didn't have as much of a lag coming up on pressure indication but when it did come up it went well over 4,000 (about 42-4300 psi) and stayed there for a couple or 3 seconds and then settled back to a normal reading. All the checks went good up until launch. At launch, I didn't seem to have any roll-off. I had a little bit of stick in and had checked the trim before launch and it was at zero. a went up to about 16-17° indicated in the cockpit and it felt bad right at first. It felt like there was very little pitch damping right at launch and I was having an awfully hard time getting on a, but then once I got on it seemed to stabilize out real well and seemed to be a real nice flying airplane. The next time I noticed any problem was coming up on theta. It seemed to be awfully hard to establish theta, and it felt wormy at that time so I looked down at the damper panel. I couldn't see the lights on but I saw the circuit breakers down, so I reached down and reengaged them. The first time at launch I thought probably the dampers had fallen out and that's why it was so hard to stabilize on theta so keeping an eye on a because it was so high I reached down and reengaged. The switches were down and as I say, it felt like it smoothed out then. I looked down, the lights were out so I rotated on up to theta and again pitch seemed to be awfully hard to establish. I looked down again, the lights were out and I thought maybe it was just me or just a different airplane. Then pitch and roll both seemed to be hard to hold so I looked down and noticed, the circuit breakers down again. It was a little hard to see things in the cockpit, the sun was coming in about as bad I guess as I have seen in the airplane. It wasn't so bad that you couldn't, by concentrating, focus on things but it slowed the scan pattern down a little. I reached over and pushed the circuit breakers and they felt all in. I reengaged the M-H switches again and I had developed a roll angle at that time, of 45-50° I would say, so I concentrated on getting the airplane back in a good attitude and trying to listen to Bob on his callouts. The left earphone in the headset went out and I thought Bob was talking out of the corner of his mouth for a while. Everything was coming in the right side real weak and it was hard to hear him, so we had several things going against us there. Then the airplane seemed to stabilize out again on theta and to handle pretty well so I concentrated at that time on energy and on the platform then to see if it was staying with us. It was maybe 3-4,000 ft in altitude above the callouts that Bob was giving. Then close to burnout, about 4500 fps, I started to lose roll authority so I looked down at the dampers again and the lights were out. By concentrating a while and looking through the sun I could see the switches were down again so I went ahead and shut down at 5,000 fps on velocity and about 120,000 ft. callout. I wanted to go a little low if anything because I just wasn't sure what we had in the way of dampers. It became apparent in a hurry then as q bled off that we didn't have any roll BCS from M-H, so I first righted the airplane with the manual BCS controls and then went to manual position on M-H BCS. This didn't seem to have any affect so I went back to manual BCS, disengaged M-H and set up the side trim for the reentry. We got the DC circuit breaker back in and M-H would not stay engaged. Light still didn't come on but the circuit breakers wouldn't stay engaged. I think it was here that Bob said to disengage the BCS M-H and M-H did stay on the line then. The circuit breakers would stay engaged with the BCS off and the circuit breakers on the right console did stay in. We were just about peaking out at this time so I started concentrating on attitude for the experiment and feeling the airplane out at the same time to see what we did have to reenter with. There was, of course, no BCS on M-H but I had BCS manual on the left hand stick and maintained attitude until q started to build up again. I am sure the dampers were operating on the reentry because it was a real nice flying airplane on reentry. I indicated about 170,000 ft. at peak on inertial altitude so the platform was working good all the way over the top. I could see the field on the way down and I could see that I was off to the right of track. Whether this was because of the roll attitudes that I had gotten to during this operation with the flight control system or whether we were not quite lined up at launch, I don't know. We had about 5° deviation between B-52, chase and X-15 heading indicators but at any rate I had the field in sight quite far out and it was a matter of just flying energy back then. Chase pickup was good over the field. I had a little more energy than I needed at high key and had to use speed brakes in the pattern, I didn't want to get too far away from the field in the pattern so I flew a fairly tight pattern and kept using speed brakes. I had anticipated touching down shorter than normal because of the temperature today but my touchdown I think was probably about 1,500 ft. long at 200 knots indicated. The nose seemed to come down exceptionally hard but maybe its just been awhile since I've flown. I did come in on the stick in time to at least lighten the skids, if not bring them off the ground. I'm not sure whether they came off or not. I don't know whether somebody out on lakebed could see. Directional control was real good with aileron inputs.

Questions:

Maximum theta that I saw on the ball looked like about 31-32°. This was right after coming up on theta. "Did you reset theta?" For reentry, no. I reentered on the ball. I was busy operating the flight control systems and didn't even bother with that. It seemed to be awfully steady though once going over the top and concentrating on flying the airplane with manual BCS and M-H on aerodynamics. "Your bank angle on the way out on the powered portion, say again the degrees and about where? As you were getting up on theta?" No, this was after I had established theta that the bank angle got over. Bank angle went over I'd say pretty close to 80° again after the burnout while I was still going up before peak altitude. Yaw at these times never did get more than a couple of degrees from the indicator, anyway, a couple of degrees off center. "During theta?" I don't know, don't remember for sure, John, but I'd say in the neighborhood of 40° maybe at one time. "This right or left?" This was right during burn and left after burnout. "Do you recall when M-H was off did you have to hold any roll trim in?" During the climb portion, yes, just towards burnout as I say I started to lose roll authority all together. It started a left roll and I couldn't hold it with almost full stick. Peak altitude we were level, wings level. This was after burnout on the way up. We should have gotten good experiment data from peak altitude on down almost to pushover. Since we used 15° a the nose never did come up more than 1° or 2° above the horizon. "Did you use any bank angle on entry?" Yes, about 5° or so of left bank. "Did you feel you running out roll at low speeds transfer over to BCS at that point?" This was just before shutdown and as I said at this time I shut down early ( at 5,000 fps) and went right over to BCS to get the thing pointed back. "You were still pretty low q at that point?" Right. Well, the sun was brighter coming in to the cockpit. More than I've noticed before. It didn't really blank out any instruments; it just made a cross-check a lot harder. It was like looking at instruments and switches and gauges through a haze and of course there are a lot of reflections off the visor. "Do you feel that you want to make a recommendation now on don't launch after a certain time or a certain sun angle?" Not because of the sun the way it was today, I don't think. Certainly not a recommendation not to launch. "We have a worse problem going at any time of day out of Mud Lake that's right into the sun."