The pretaxi phase went without incident, I guess. When we started to taxi out, the airplane seemed like it was trying to set up a natural frequency lateral oscillation, I guess because of flat spots on the B-52 tires. It started swaying noticeably, so I turned data on for a few seconds on the way out from the parking area out to the taxi way. I shut it off and then got another burst of data as we turned onto the taxi way, and another one as we swung by the tower. I didn't turn it on as we did the 180 on the runway because it was a pretty mild turn around and it didn't feel like there was very much in the way of side loads. I was waiting to get some data in turbulence, but there wasn't any good turbulence on the way up so we didn't get any in the mated condition. The radios worked pretty good. When Milt called to go to X-15 radios, you were coming in about 4 by through the B-52 radios. It wasn't bad, although I could tell a difference. When I went to X-15, it was a little better. In the turn I guess you lost contact with me, although I could still hear you talking. That was my fault because I should have gone back to intercom. I didn't even think about my being blanked out by the B-52 in the turn. We should have been coming through on the Beatty radios though. Well, other than that they worked OK up until launch.

Launch was real smooth, there wasn't any real big transients that I noticed. I got your 2-degree call to the right and made a correction. There wasn't any problem establishing or holding either a or q. Once I got on q, your transmissions started getting real garbled. The B-52 pilot said that you had a loud squeal in the background. I didn't notice any squeal, but it was real garbled. I was waiting for your calls on altitude so I knew what to expect, but after your call to make the heading correction I think if you'd have said anything other than what we'd gone through on the simulator it'd have been hard to figure out. Well, Bob didn't hear the squeal either, but he said the radios sounded garbled. He was in Chase 1 position and said the radios were bad until after the reentry where, I guess, you switched to Edwards only. Then they came through loud and clear. It sounded about the same in the X-15, I guess, except on the way down they started clearing up a little. The platform looked real good on the way up. We were sweeping right through the indicated altitude, as you'd call it out and the velocity cross checks were right on the money as were the times. The last real good check that I was counting on was the 100,000-foot check, and it was right on the money, so I decided at that time to shut down on the platform velocity rather than on the clock. I shut down right at 5400 and looked at the altitude predictor. It was just coming through about l91,000. I'd already convinced myself that if the platform was working I'd use the predictor for a crutch from there on. I cranked in about 15° a, which, according to the simulator, wouldn't quite give us an additional 10,000 feet, but would almost give us the 200,000. I think if nothing else, I found out that one of two things occur with this predictor. Either there's a lag in the predictor, or else angle of attack after burnout makes a lot more difference than what we see on the simulator. I held 15° a up to about 150,000 to 160,000 feet and then pushed over to zero a. It took awhile to get set up on 15° and to see what the predictor was doing, and then the thing started winding on up to 200,000 and I couldn't get it stopped! It kept going up even after I was on zero a, which shouldn't be the case, and leads me to believe that there may be some sort of a lag in the instrument. I don't know enough about the electronics of it to understand how it could do that. But, at any rate, once it stopped, I guess we were going through about 180,000 and the predictor was showing about 209,000. Alpha hold didn't seem to be quite as effective in the airplane as it did in the simulator. I was trying to set a with the little vernier trim wheel on the side and the airplane seemed to show more oscillation than the simulator.

"Did you, were you pushing over when you engaged it?"

I think I was pretty well stabilized when I engaged it. It drifted a little bit which I kinda half expected, but during the corrections to get it back to 1° a, the airplane seemed awfully loose in pitch damping, a lot looser than the simulator indicated. I hated that overshoot. I could see that coming from quite a way down and about the only good thing I could think was that at least we would get a lot of data for these experiments going over the top. I counted the roll cycles for the radiometer. I wanted to get at least 15 sweeps and I stopped counting on 15 while we were still going up, so we should get plenty of data.

I don't think I did it when I switched a on, but I think when I switched a hold on, I also got the roll hold switch on. I didn't notice that until I started back down and I still don't know why I looked back over there. It wasn't the hold mode light that showed me because it's real hard to see if those lights are on. I looked back down, saw the roll hold was engaged, disengaged it and it didn't seem to effect the roll maneuver at all.

Coming back down the airplane felt pretty good. I felt a normal acceleration oscillation coming down through about 150,000 feet. We got a little bit of b oscillation, but I think less than normally on reentries. It seems like we get a little bit of yaw oscillation as the airplane starts to pick up some q and weather vane, but it seemed like I could feel some normal accelerations. I checked a, it wasn't oscillating at all, and pitch wasn't oscillating at all. I looked out the window and the attitude wasn't oscillating, but it seemed like I could feel it. I don't know whether it was the g-suit cycling or what it was, but something was cycling. The energy management into the lake was no problem at all. I knew I was higher on energy so I picked up about 11 to 1200 q and held it. Seems like once you get inside Cuddeback and you know that you have a good platform, or at least can get an idea of what your altitude and velocity are, energy management is a lot less critical an item than it is in the simulator or than I know it is on the ground. You can see the field, and you know your position over the ground. Probably if you are coming straight in under maximum L/D it would be a different situation, but I didn't feel any concern as far as getting the energy bled off or as far as knowing when to bring in or put out speed brakes. The landing was pretty normal, I think. In the pattern Pete called out 320 knots when I was indicating 295. He was a good bit on the outside of the turn and I don't know how well stabilized he was then, but his calls all through the pattern were almost 20 knots higher than what I was seeing. I was, therefore, real anxious to get a call from him after the flare, but didn't hear an airspeed call out. Touchdown was between 190 and 195 knots. I would think that with the apparent airspeed indicator error we would be fast and the nose would come down a little bit more gently than normal, but it slapped down pretty hard, I thought.

"Did you push before touchdown?"

No, I didn't push till after I felt the skids touch. "The skids did lift off slightly." Is that right? I was anticipating the push but I'm pretty sure I didn't get any forward stick in until after I felt the skids touch. The nose did feel like it wrapped down pretty sharply.

"What speed did you drop the gear?"

Between 260 and 270 indicated. Flaps came down at 290 indicated, which, if the airspeed is reading high could have been as high as 300, I guess, or a little better.

(Butchart): "We were commenting on the transmission quality and if we didn't have a flight card in front of us we wouldn't have known what Milt was saying. In fact we heard him when he went to local, even out where we were it came in real good."

That is what Bob said and he was right with you in Chase 1. He could hear better on Edwards only, than when you had both transmitters going.