POST-FLIGHT:

POST-FLIGHT: 3-59-89

DATE: May 17, 1967

PILOT: William H. Dana

Well, this was 3-59-89 and it was about as smooth as any I've ever seen. I can't remember anything developing until, any troubles developing until Mike tried 286.8 from Beatty only. I don't think I ever heard anything on 286.8 from Beatty. Chase 2 called in and said he was reading Mike but I just did not hear a word. 279.9 I heard about 5 x 4. This has kind of been the plan we developed yesterday afternoon to try one channel out of Edwards only and one channel out of Beatty only, and if that indeed is the way we launched why it sure looked good to me. Then I missed a couple of circuit breakers on my check list and that was just me moving too fast there. Fortunately somebody caught them and we did get the trim and all of the trim circuit breakers in. Then I can't think of any problems we had from there on down the creek to launch. Launch was very good. Alpha got just a bit high as usual, but I only got over 12 or 13° there on the rotation. The theta vernier looked good. I picked up the theta vernier and held it. One time I got real concerned, the theta vernier screwed up because my alpha cross pointer was down below the line and I was reading my alpha cross pointer as my theta cross there. I thought I only had about 10 theta in and I finally got around that one. Then I was going to watch H dot from my push over and I was going to wait until I saw 670 H dot and push it on over about 660 actually, because I was reading about 10' a second low on launch. I only saw 600 H dot as Mike was calling me through 55. I also was reading 55 on altitude so I pushed over there. I don't know what time it was and then the q, H dot cross check started looking real good and at 1350 I throttled it back and the engine kept running which surprised me. So about 1425 I started out on the brakes and kept H dot around 50. I never checked my longitudinal acceleration because I had about all the things I wanted to cross check there, and then we held what we had until burnout which later showed to be 96.1 seconds. Then I got my surprise for the flight, and that was that I was reading my heading indicator from a distance of 2". I elected, at that time, to turn the throttle and engine master off, go to alpha beta and roll rate and if I had it to do over again I'd have delayed all those items until I was a little farther down the creek because I developed about 200' a second H dot that I'd just as soon not have next time around. This put me over Cuddeback about 5000; low, and although my Mach number was right for my tail load point my q obviously wasn't because I got to about all the g I wanted before I got to 10° alpha. So I think I got about a 9° tail load point for the tail load troops. (?) Yes, it was. Tail load started at 2.5. So then we were a little low on energy all the way in and Mike finally asked me to bring my speed brakes in. I hit North Base at 43,000 on the inertials, and play around with this multiple aim point pattern for a little while but while I was out looking for aim point I let my airspeed get away from me and I finally decided to just abandon the whole thing and fly a standard traffic pattern. I think I will continue to do this in the future because the pattern did not look particularly good to me at any phase of the........... I was always either, I thought, high or low and I guess I got enough longs going for me and I ended up at the two mile marker in spite of myself. I thought touchdown was very smooth. I did not hear Chase 4 from high key until he was on his way there, and I don't know whether it was his radio or my receiver. I can't really think of much further to add to my comments. The panel went at 1500 q and 4500' a second as scheduled. I felt it go and that is about all I have. (?) Actually q, as I remember, bled off just slightly from when the panel went, maybe down to 1470, John. I remember I was stirring the cake pretty good right there, adding g's and subtracting them trying to get it where I wanted it. But overall, I was most pleased with it. It went right at 1500 and 4500' a second. What bleed off we had on q I would not think would detract from the data. The only real thing I would do different if I had to do it over again was not to develop the H dot after the panel went. The inertial altitude was 45,000 at launch and it was 55,000 as Mike called 55,000. We could check the cockpit camera film, but I am sure H dot was not anywhere near 670 when I pushed over. I'd say it was more like 600 or 610. (?) H dot was about 10' a second at launch. Just very slightly low. By the way, the H dot bug was at zero the entire time and I'd really not as soon have it there so I could read my pre-launch H dot a little more accurately. The bug gets in the way. H dot bug never moved and the H dot readout never moved. (?) The entire flight. (?) Yes, that's right. I said it was the alpha needle that confused me there in the boost. It wasn't the alpha, it was down reading about 10° of theta. (?) I don't remember. I wasn't flying Bruce's guidance today. (?) That's right, I never did look at my other q meter or my other g meter. (?) Yes. Prelaunch H dot looked like it was reading a very slight rate of descent, but you could not read it accurately because the H dot bug was in the way. (?) I think that would be admirable. (?) The word did not get back to flight planning on that because we would like to have had it at 670. (?) OK, OK.