POST-FLIGHT:

POST-FLIGHT: 3-52-78

DATE: July 18, 1966

PILOT: W. Dana

Well, this was flight 3-52 that finally got around to happening July 18th. Things went extremely smoothly all the way to launch. And this glitch we had on this alpha tape, outbound there, I may or may not have a true confession to make on it. I thought I was reading 7 1/2° alpha on both the ball nose and computed alpha. Then I went to press-to-test ball nose there at NASA/s request, and it went down to the prescribed 9° minus alpha, and when it came back up it was reading 2 1/2° on both the ball nose and computed, and I think maybe one of our friendly fighter pilots may have misread his alpha tape the first time around. But, since we did have the tape run down and back up in the interim, I can't say honestly that I know that's what happened, it just sounds reasonable. Because computed alpha was with us all the way this flight, every time I checked it, it was right there and I think that probably we had a little cockpit fog there at about the 10 minute point. That was the only snag I noticed on the way outbound. The only two gross and computed malfunction lights I remember were when we went from ground power to B-52 power, and from B-52 power to internal to ship's power and these two were normal; they came along as they should and they punched out as they should. So, it looks to me like we are out of the woods on the inertial. Launch was just about as bad as I expected it to be, and I let you get a few respiration checks on me while I was searching for the throttle. I was quite pleased with this business of getting power the first time. Along here somebody said "your thrust looks low." Well, I could not tell whether it was low or high but I was coming up to theta nicely so I waited a few more seconds and then I found time to reach down and grab the throttle and jam it to the stop, and it felt to me like I picked up just a little thrust there. Oh, I guess probably after I was on theta. It was quite a while after I was told my thrust was low. Then everything appeared to go pretty handily until I got to 70,000 feet. As I remember, my H dot was 800 at pushover, which it should be, and it was still 800 at 70,000. Now these two obviously are not compatible. It's just the way I remember it. But, at 70,000 at least I realized I was going high, as I remember I went about 2/10 of a g negative trying to compromise between hitting my 80,000 foot level off and not shutting the engine down due to too much negative g. My tape said 83,000 at shutdown, as I remember it, and also the calls I got from NASA 1 were coming just about 5,000 feet too early. This was certainly through no fault of NASA 1. I think their radar was off today, but when Jack called 70,000 and I had 65,000 and I said, well, I got my tapes so I'll play it my way, and I did. I came level at 83,000 and got my g up to one. I heard the call "standby for shutdown" just about the right time and looked over at my tape reading; 4550 as I remember it. I was just getting ready to lunge for the throttle and it dropped down to about 4450, and then back to 4500. Well, I said, that's the third time and that's good enough for me and I shut down. I don't know what my burn time was. At this time I went up to 11° alpha, got fairly comfortable rotation, but I was not getting the g I needed to get the corner turned. I shut down high, my q was low and, therefore, I was not getting the rate of climb I should have for 11° so I allowed my altitude to go over the prescribed 86,000 for the pushover to zero g. I'd say it was about 89, 90 when I finally went over to zero g, and about a positive 400 H dot. At this time, I rolled into my 90° left bank and I got my first surprise of the flight, and that was that I could not see through the sun shade. So, rather than pull it down, like any sane man would have done, I just went ahead and fought the problem and went through my rudder pulses with the sun shade up. This was kind of disorienting, because I could not get the relationship with the nose moving through the horizon as I saw this beta needle wiggling. I was seeing blue sky out of my right window and nothing out of the left window, and so I could not tell what the nose was doing, but the beta needle was wiggling around just about like it should have been, so I said well, that's about all we are going to do for that data point. It seems to me that when I came off my rudder pulse I had about a degree of nose right sideslip in, kind of a residual sideslip there, so I whomped it out and went back down to zero alpha and over to the right to get my second tail loads point. Here I had a little more negative H dot. I fooled around the left bank too long, and I had a little more negative H dot than I wanted, so I went through the third tail loads point pretty fast there, and I have been told that I did not get my 15°. I did go to alpha/beta to have alpha on my cross pointer, and I never remember seeing that rascal. I was working off the alpha tape and I don't remember seeing the alpha needle. At any rate, I got two aileron pulses there, and I played with the beta dot just a little bit. At this time I had my 600 H dot so I came on home. Jack said that he had me over Cuddeback and this came as quite a surprise to me, because I just did not think I could be that far already. I rolled over and I was at Cuddeback, so I came out with the speed brakes and turned the yaw damper off and made a small rudder pulse, let it go about three cycles, and came back on with the yaw damper. At this point, I checked computed alpha and beta and they were reading exactly what the aircraft was, 3° and zero. So, it looks to me like this computed alpha was right with us all the way. People kept screaming here for me to pull my speed brakes in from this time on. I knew what my energy was and I knew what I wanted my high key at, which was Mach one and 35,000. I played it by ear, left a little speed brake out all the way to high key and hit it at 35,000 and Mach one. I thought my pattern was going to be a beauty when I started around it, but when I got down wind, I did the same thing I did on my last flight. I got a little too tight in and I called that and turned back to the right to get out where I wanted to be. As I came around my final turn I thought I was right where I wanted to be until I got on final, and then I was obviously picking up more airspeed than I wanted. I got up to around 320 on final, I guess, and at that time called and said I was putting out some speed brakes, and held it out until I thought I had my 300 again - and I thought I was where I wanted to be. I put the brakes in and flared it about 310, actually 310 indicated. Shortly thereafter, I put the flaps down and I did not get the flap transient that I had gotten in Ship #1. Probably because the rate command was taking this pitching rate out, but after the flaps got down I did notice that I was having a big tendency to balloon. I was holding in quite a bit of stick and I either ballooned a little bit or at least held what I had which was more than I wanted. So, then I put the landing gear down and kind of dived for my landing point. I had thought I landed one half mile long. I had been told by Chase planes that they did not think it was quite this long. It was not over a half mile. (Three tenths of a mile.) OK, I believe that. I had one other point to make on the landing. Oh, I'd guess it was about 210 knots landing. The landing was not as smooth as my last one; I kind of drove it in but it was not a hard landing either. Immediately upon landing I came full forward with the side arm controller. I don't remember whether the stick kicker fired or not, and after I thought I was solidly on the ground I came full aft on the stick and held my heading as long as I was able. When it started drifting off slightly to the right and then I ended up 100', 200' right of the runway. I had used zero trim in the pattern which was fine, I did not need any more than that, but I used a negative one degree of trim for the final approach. This was a very clever political move on my part to pacify both the flight planning people, who said to use zero and the pilots that said use 2 or minus 3. If I had it to do over again, I'd use minus 2, and I intend to next time. (?) Yes, I guess I mean a plus 2 on the controller. Two degree nose down trim is what I intend to use next time because there was a little forward stick force there while I was putting the gear down. I think I would rather have it the other way next time. It did not seem to me as comfortable as Ship #1 in the landing. It just did not seem to have the linear positive pitch gradient, stick force gradient versus pitching moment that Ship #1 did, and I did not put it where I wanted it quite as well as I did Ship #1. I also might go on record with what I think of the Lear Panel. Actually, I can't say I had any complaints about it at all today. I had a lot of things I was going to say bad about it, from my simulator work. One thing I did not use was the Lear clock, and I think I did this with malice aforethought. The standard X-15 engine timer is right in the center of the panel. It's got excellent resolution, no parallax to speak of because it is right in front of you. I knew it was going to be better before I ever launched, and I intentionally used that clock. I see no reason to change this policy on something as critical as time, particularly when you start losing other gages. There is no reason to go with the second best system when you have the first best system. So, as far as I am concerned, I'd rather use the clock that was in the X-15 all along and forget the Lear clock. I am willing to grant that there may be times when mission time will be usable, possibly in energy management work where we will want to work with mission time. In that case, the Lear mission time, I am sure, will be entirely satisfactory. It turned out that I did not have to use either my mechanical g meter or my q meter and indeed I did not use them as other than for cross check during the flight. (?) I can't say that I did, Jack. I used one and then I used another. They both looked right and I did not compare them. I did compare the mechanical g meter to the tape g meter at zero g, and they were right on the money. I had one other point to make on the Lear panel. I can't remember what it was, but Lear panel worked correctly, as far as I could tell, with the possible exception of this tape at shutdown and if it works as well always, as it did today, why I think it is going to be an entirely usable system. I was going to complain that you did not get peripheral information off the velocity tape that you do off the large sweep hand going around, but my particular profile today did not get me into an area of confusion. By the time I started looking at velocity for shutdown, I was past the 4000' hack, which could have been confused with 4500' hack. So, I did not run into any problem on that, and I can't say that I really have any complaints about the Lear panel except that the timer is not as good as the one we already had, and I personally see no reason to use it. The question was, did I notice the predicted jumping or stepping of the H dot, and I did not, Johnny. It looked very smooth to me. My maneuvering was fixed gain in yaw and I did one rudder pulse, yaw damper off after speed brakes were out, and I was on my way home from Cuddeback. The question was, what did my inertials read after the flight? I believe I called H dot read zero to somebody. That ring a bell? Altitude was about minus 1900, 1800'. Just a little less than 2000' below sea level, and velocity, I thought I remembered zero. Yes, I remember, I remember the other point I had to make. This airplane has a two inch altimeter in it, and I think it goes without saying that a two inch altimeter is not as good as a three inch, so I was flailing madly trying to figure out what altitude I was on, on final, and finally gave up on that analysis, landed visually.