POST-FLIGHT:

POST-FLIGHT: 3-63-94

DATE: October 4, 1967

PILOT: William H. Dana

After watching Bill Reschke hit North Base at 28 after, there remained very little for me to do to be a hero, but we pressed on and I can't ever remember any flight that went as smoothly as this one. We had just a little trouble with sticky BCS. I think just as soon as I got the Honeywell on, and got the Honeywell BCS switch on and rapped the stick a couple of times, it appeared to calm down. At least what I could see. At 30 seconds we were right on launch heading so I put the roll hold on and launched on schedule. Got about 15 alpha in the rotation which I thought I was not going to do. Then steadied out and started pulling up to theta at about 31 theta, I guess, where the boost guidance was centered so I started tracking it right there. Then it took me to the full 34. I was watching my heading and it was really looking nice. I thought, man, this roll hold is really the answer to holding your heading. Then I looked up and roll hold was not on, so I turned it on and from then on I tracked boost guidance. I tracked it pretty closely except at 80,000 and 100,000, and was just getting off it long enough to go over and cross check my energy, and it was enough to let it get away from me. Now, somewhere in this general area, somewhere after 80,000 and before shutdown, the boost guidance needle jumped about 3° commanding nose up. Then jumped back to zero and it looked like it lost power so I abandoned it and I never looked at it again. So, I don't know, indeed if it had clunked out. But, at any rate, I lost faith in it and I flew theta from there until burnout. I got my hand on the throttle about 5500 feet and the engine quit at about 5600. So I turned the throttle off and went about the things I had to do. By the time I looked at the inertial velocity again, it was reading 5700. So, we got some tail off today, and I don't know just how much but it was probably a little over 5700 on my gage. We followed the profile as prescribed. I got a few wing rocks in and then about 200,000 I started getting squared away on beta. Getting it squared away for going to computed alpha. Beta was on zero and so was heading. So it looks like we had a pretty good boost. When I went to computed alpha, ball nose was indicating a positive degree and a half, and it went to about a negative three. So I had in increment there of maybe 4 to 5° where computed alpha was indicating lower than ball nose alpha. Computed beta stayed on zero so it must have been right with the program. This is the first time I have seen this happen. (?) Yes. Well, you just don't have enough velocity before launch to let this compute real good, I don't believe. (?) After we got on computed alpha we started, I don't really know what we did, because somewhere around 240,000 feet I looked up to check if PAI switch was on, and indeed it was not, so I turned it on and this was before peak altitude. Then started tracking things. The airplane was not as tight as my two previous experiences with altitudes like this. Before, I felt like it was flying auto-pilot, and today I was working some to keep everything within 2° of commands, but I was working at it. As we went over the top I looked at my altimeter, Mike was calling 250 and I read about 247.3. Coming back in I stayed on my zero theta and I was working pretty good. The unusual thing I noticed was that side stick trim seemed out of trim. I won't say the stick, the airplane seemed out of trim, and I was using about all the back stick I wanted to with my wrist, trying to hold the nose up. I got the center stick with my left hand and I continued to track, but I needed some help from the left hand to do a good job. Coming back down to about 230 or thereabouts, I called computed alpha. As I remember it was reading 12 or 13°. Let's say 13, I went to ball nose and I was reading 17. Se we had a constant error there, which is fine as long as a guy checks his delta alpha, delta beta, and if he goes computed I think he can fly that over the top and do a real fine job with it. At 200,000 we went to alpha beta. The hold modes came off. At 180 the experiments came in and they were checked in. The camera came on. Then I was just amazed at Mike's call of 130, and I looked down and sure enough I had one g. Now I tracked my alpha pretty good I believe until 4.5 g's, and there, for reasons I can't even explain to myself, I held about 4.5. It seemed to me that I had way too much H dot coming through 85,000 or so. That's when I called Mike and asked what my altitude was, because I thought I was sinking in low. I don't remember whether I ever saw less than 80,000 on my altimeter, but I remember I climbed purposely thinking that I needed it. About this time I went visual, pulled my window shade down. I could see Edwards. I looked out of the window when they said 50 miles, and there was China Lake, right where I thought it should be. I held a little more H dot than I planned on, because I know I zoomed a little bit. I think I hit Cuddeback about three and seventy. Pushed over to negative 600 H dot. Pulled up to 12 alpha, got no buffet at all. Pushed back over to try to hit my high key, and I think I would have hit my high key right where I planned at 45,000 and 325 knots, but I got interested in watching Chase 4 and giving him vectors and ended up a couple thousand feet low at high key. In the turn to downwind I noticed what I called out as buffet. In retrospect, I don't know whether it was buffet or whether it was just my g suit. My g suit was pumping air in the area of my right hip. At the same time the pilot's oxygen low light started blinking. So, while I was trying to mentally correlate these two events, which obviously were unrelated, I just toyed with the whole thing mentally and finally Pete suggested that I pull my green apple. That sounded like a good idea, and I did it. I intended to hold 325 knots throughout the pattern. I got a little wide and floated down to 300 on my final approach to landing where I wanted it. I touched down right at the two mile marker with my usual double vision. The slide out was normal. I had good heading control until below 100 knots and then it veered off to the left. I parked it on a heading of 172. Have one other comment. The radio sounded pretty good at launch. I heard Mike say it looks good and we went. That is the last detectable words I heard from him until he said we have you going over the top at 250. I think I heard every single call, and I knew what the call was but all I was getting was the side tone broken. Then from peak altitude on in, I think I heard every call. They were not as good as I would have liked to have them as far as audio quality.