DATE: August 19, 1966
PILOT: Bill Dana
Launch was about usual for me, a big reign of terror until I got the throttle on. When I looked at alpha it was reading 15° so I pushed it back over to 11 and hit theta at about 21 seconds. Got a good call from NASA 1 to standby for theta and hit it just about on schedule. Then, as I remember, theta stayed pretty well on all the way. Heading started drifting off to the right and I tried to put in some correction during the boost to keep heading on launch heading, and I would assume that there was a slight engine misalignment in yaw that drifted us off to the right although a look at the camera film might show that I did get off to the right. I remember heading over the top at about 220 so I definitely was off to the right by burnout. I shut down at 5150 indicated because I tried this on my last flight, shutting down 50 feet a second early, and the tail-off gave me just about what I was looking for. Today I saw about 5190 maximum velocity on tape, and my burn time was 75.3 seconds, which was 7/10 of a second less than we predicted. Immediately went down in the vicinity of zero alpha while I still had some q on the airplane, checked computed alpha and it was reading within one degree of the ball nose. Went back to ball nose and my h dot was 1000 feet a second going through 160, so I knew I was going low there, but of course, I knew that there was not anything I could do about it. So, I got the speed brakes out and then looked at my tape q, and oh, just before I went over the top, the tape q was reading about 80 pounds. That's a lot higher than I expected so I looked at my dial q and it was reading zero. So, once again, I checked the computed alpha and once again it looked good, although it was not at zero alpha at this time. I think I had 4 to 5° or 3. The computed alpha was reading within 1° of ball nose and the betas looked good on all the computed beta. The speed brakes came out and I did give a quick look out of the window. Saw most of the California coast from, oh probably San Luis Obispo on around until it went under my nose at Malibu or thereabouts. Then I started getting my alpha up, in fact I cribbed a little on my alpha, I started it up before I got over the top and was pretty much with it all the way. I finally got it up to 17° and checked my computed alpha again at 17° and there it was reading 1° high, as I remember. The computed alpha was reading 18 and the ball nose alpha 17. So, I was pretty pleased with my computed alpha. My next check came at 120,000 when I had anticipated being 1 g and I was at about 7/10 of a g. Now we had some variances in the simulator. Early in my simulator work, 1 g at 120 looked like a good number. Yesterday we were reading about 7/10 of a g at 120, so Jack Kolf and I agreed that the simulator was definitely off and not to be relied on. At any rate, my g was low so I came in at about 18° alpha there, and I held that until I got some pretty good q on the airplane and then I had a little trouble keeping my alpha up. It was wobbling between 15 and 16, and I am sure this was not stabilizer authority I was having trouble with, it was just getting enough physical back stick in on the side arm controller to get it up. At any rate, pretty soon my h dot came to 600 and I looked at my q and it was reading about 750 on the tape, so I looked down at my dial and it was reading 750 there also. So, in the order of 700 q the tape and the dial were reading the same. I realized it was a little high, so I held my h dot to just about zero and then pushed over for my first tail loads point which must have been in the order of 3500 feet per second. I was right, of course, at this time, and Pete asked me to put in a heading correction. In order to do so, I rolled the airplane to the left and then I could see Edwards out of the left window and I had a real good idea of where I was. At this time Pete called Cuddeback and I was quite surprised that I had over Mach three and right at 70,000, which is just about what I wanted, but on the simulator, toward the end of the week here, we had not been getting that much energy. So, I thought I really had it wired in and was going to leave the speed brakes at 20. I pushed over to zero alpha and once again put in a little left bank, because I was still a little right of course, and came up with my second tail loads point, which I would guess to be just under Mach three. At this time, I can't remember the distance called, but it was such that I had to get the nose down and get it on home. So, after my second tail loads point I went to zero alpha and held it there until I really had the high key hacked, and at that time I started whopping on circuit breakers and whatever else people do at high key. Hit high key about 40,000 and 1.2, came in with the speed brakes and made essentially a standard traffic pattern. I am obviously using too little RPM in my F-104 simulations, because I always end up coasting a lot farther and using a lot more speed brakes than I think I am going to. Went on the center stick on downwind just because I thought I could do a better job of landing on the center stick. I remembered my flaps this time right in the flare, and while I was fumbling with the gear I heard a call from Mike saying nose gear. I did not know whether he said I had one or I didn't have one, so I reached down and pulled the lever again, and at this time I got a pretty nice balloon. Once again, these balloons in the landing are not hairy. You just flare at 50 feet and then pretty soon you look down and you are 100 feet and so you nose it on over. I probably landed one to two hundred feet short of the two mile marker today. I don't remember the push, the kicker. Mike gave me a call to push and I pushed as soon as I got on the ground and I think I got in there ahead of the kicker, and then came back on the stick and when I had my stick full back I could not seem to get it over to the right to keep myself on the black line. I'm sure there is no reason for this except psychological, but I think next landing I'll go back to the side stick because I think I can do at least as good a job with it on landing and probably a better job after landing. I had plus two cranked in on the trim wheel. That's two units nose down and the next time I am going to try three units nose down. See if I can't alleviate this ballooning tendency a little bit. Slideout seemed a little shorter than usual today, and I did not land long today, so the airplane was parked about where I would have anticipated it to be. Flight out didn't appear to be long to me today as it had in the past. I stayed on the center stick until I could not seem to get all the aileron I wanted and stop my drift off to the left, so I got back on the side stick to get lots of aileron on it, but by that time I was running out of dynamic pressure and I ended up at least in the middle of that right hand runway and maybe toward the left side of it. As I remember my heading was several degrees left of runway heading, after the rollout. The inertials worked good every inch of the way. I never had any criticism of them at all. I have not quite got this discrepancy between the tape q and the dial q figured out yet. The tape q was always reading higher than the dial q until reentry and then they were right on the money. At one time I specifically checked and they were both reading 700. (?) I don't know. (?) I was a little bit surprised at the g on reentry, because I don't get it in the simulator, but... (?) No. The question was, did the little computer light flash going over the top and it did not. I'll point out that the tape q was reading 80 pounds. I think 70 was minimum at the least, and maybe the computed alpha flashing light is driven off that circuit, and I did not think we ever got low enough to flash. The dial q was reading a big fat zero going over the top, but the tape was reading 70 to 80.