Everything in the flight went real good with the exception of the radios. During the prelaunch phase, about the only thing we got fouled up on, to any extent, was checking the flaps. I wanted to wait until the chase was in position and as it turned out, that came at about the 4 minute point, I guess, but it didn't goof things up too much. I went over the X-15 radios on Milt's call and the transmissions seemed to clear up a little bit from my end, or at least I could hear Milt better. I think you were reading me better then too, Milt. I guess I was on X-15 radio for a couple of minutes and then went back to intercom, I didn't want to miss out on what was going on in the B-52.

The launch transients were very low, it was a real smooth launch. In fact, I was so surprised by it, I had to snap out of it to get the throttle on. a came up to about 12° and then I settled it back to 10. We came up on q just a little prior to Milt's call, and push over was just a little prior to the call. The parameters in the cockpit looked real good all the way up the profile, just as they had looked in the simulator. Burnout came a little early, about 90 sec. I believe, a little bit before I was ready for it. In fact, I was afraid that I had pushed over and gotten some negative a and induced the shutdown. I was about to reach up for the throttle to shutdown when it quit. In the cockpit q was indicating about 1250, as I recall. Altitude showed about 78,000 and I really didn't get a good look at velocity at shutdown. I was looking more at h dot, q build-up rate, and the clock rather than velocity. I saw it go through about 5100, and we got pretty abrupt deceleration at shutdown with speed brakes out, so it was a while before I got a good look at velocity again. The rest of the flight went just as we'd planned.

The stability investigation with the roll and yaw dampers off went real good and looked fairly similar to what we saw in the simulator with a few minor differences. The energy worked out real good, as good or better than in the simulator, and I think probably that was because I could see a lot better where I was over the ground and plan things accordingly. It worked out so we could get subsonic far enough ahead of high key to perform the subsonic stability investigations before getting into the pattern, which also worked out real good. Everything was normal in the pattern. Touchdown was fairly smooth but pretty long. I think it was half to 3/4 of a mile long. That's about all I've got.

Question: "It seemed like we had a little bit more thrust than what we had on the simulator, because on the profile here you were coming up a little faster than the time indicated. Did you notice any difference in time?" Yes, as I mentioned, getting up to q pushover velocity or push over altitude, and throttle back velocity all came just prior to your calls. Actually, it wouldn't have hurt anything if I had waited until your call but we were getting them about a second or two early.

(Conversation concerning radio transmission). I wasn't reading Bob then. When his transmitter started acting up on him, he'd start to come through with a transmission every now and again, and it seemed like it'd go out right away. I decided to go ahead with the APU start so we wouldn't goof up our timing too much, and I think another thing that kind of cramped us in time a little bit was the No. 1 APU. It started up and did the same thing that it does all the time in pressures. It goes up and pegs at about 4400 indicated. Then it came back down and showed a normal reading. The first indication I had was that the left generator wouldn't reset. The hydraulics were holding up good. Of course, I wasn't moving the stick around so the APU was probably running down already. I tried a couple of resets before Milt's call and then a couple more after that. Then the hydraulic pressure started going back down, and it was pretty apparent the APU had shutdown. The second time it fired right up and didn't overshoot, - "The light didn't go out the first time you reset at all?" The generator? No, I believe the light went out and then it came on again right away.

Bob had one comment, about his only comment about the whole flight in fact. He said that at the completion of the MH-96 check the stabilizer went to full deflection, and he said that normally it does go to a big deflection but he said it looked like it went full throw on this one. "Where did it end up at the end of the test? Did you have to retrim it?" About 4°, nothing abnormal at all. "72 and 73 are the auto trim checks where we drive it quite far and it looks like it's going further." The stick didn't move, at least it didn't go full throw. "The trim doesn't move that fast. All it does is check that it is starting to move."

"Did you notice any deterioration in the radio about the time you started to turn up until that time you were Edwards only, and then we went to Edwards and Beatty at the end of the lake?" No, actually it got a little better in the turn. I guess I went back to B-52 radios right before the turn, and X-15 right after the turn. "What about during flight, did you have any problem?" No, I heard you real well until we got back about over Cuddeback. From there until almost high key it started acting up again.

"We should have punched Beatty out there again but we didn't." "We did." "OK, then I was still on simultaneous too, which is bad." Yeah, in fact it got pretty scratchy, pretty garbled, just this side of Cuddeback.

As for the energy management, we had a lot of time it seemed like, and we weren't crowded in the flight like it seemed to be on the simulator all the time. It seemed like we had more time and I was real tempted to shut the dampers off and get some stability data at around Mach 2. But with the radios acting like they were, I thought turning the dampers off might excite somebody and we wouldn't get proper transmissions back and forth.

"Did you get any buffet at your 12° a point?" Very little. Less than I had expected after talking with Bob. He implied that I should get some pretty heavy buffet, but I was at about 320 indicated, which shouldn't have made a lot of difference with the angle of attack the same, but I didn't notice hardly any buffet at all. Just a little nibbling is all.