Flight 3-36-59
October 30, 1964
Pilot: Milton O. Thompson
Then I got a call somewhere around 2 or below to shut the dampers off. I reached up and turned yaw damper to fixed gain first and thought, "That's wrong," so I shut yaw off and turned it back on and shut it off right. I got roll off, and there was no roll at all in the airplane. It's just perfectly normal; felt real good; real stable; so I went over to the center stick and moved the wings around a little bit with the center stick. By this time I was almost in high key, so I turned the dampers back on and went into the approach pattern. I had no problem in the approach. I trimmed again about 3 units nose down, or full nose down, on the pitch rate trim in the approach and put the flaps down about 330, somewhere in there. At 300 I dropped the gear (you sure could feel them clunk down this time) and felt real fast, and then flew it on into the ground. I figured the angle of attack was pretty low. I don't know what touchdown speed was but dumped the nose as soon as the main skids hit and probably picked the tail end up again, and then, soon as everything settled down, came back in on the stabilizer to stop in this short stop procedure. No problem.
(?) I think I put them out right after I touched down, I'm not sure.
The loads actually seemed lighter, both on the captive flight and on this flight, than they do on the ground; it could be adrenaline helping it, or something, but there is no problem force-wise. The travel, whatever it is, is OK on this particular airplane.
Question: Any questions for Milt?
Thompson: No, it finally went out at, I guess, high key. Somewhere in there I looked down and it was finally out.
Question: Did you see any signs of fire in the airplane?
Thompson: Yes, there was one other thing: when the fire
warning came on, I lost number 2 source of course through the auto fire
system, and then in selecting peroxide jettison, I got rid of number 1
too, so when I went to pressurize in the pattern, it didn't pressurize.