POST-FLIGHT:

POST-FLIGHT: 3-64-95

DATE: October 17, 1967

PILOT: Maj. Wm. Knight

After we got that helicopter squared away we got engine start and everything went real well. Right after take-off the radio, of course, went to pot. It sure sounded like you had mic button problems. I could hear you keying the mic and you would get about a half word out and then it would blank out. Then when you released the mic it would do the same thing. That is why I kept suggesting you change headsets. I guess it was in the radio and until we went to radio in the X-15 and got out to about, oh I guess the last problem we had was when I tried to start the APU's at nine minutes I could not get confirmation and I think we were cutting each other out a couple of times. That is why I asked Fred to get confirmation. He could not hear it either. We finally caught up there about the APU start, and from then on I guess you heard me all the way around and every time you would answer I would hear you all the way around. At two minutes we got behind again a few seconds, two or three minutes, but we caught up again and in plenty of time for the one minute call. At two minutes, when the B-52 rolled out on a heading of 170 or whatever it was, my precision heading was right on. I thought that's great, we will hold that and we will be in great shape. The next thing I heard was 3° right and, of course, it threw it all off. After I got the one minute call and he had rolled out, there I finally asked him to roll back left a couple of degrees because I was two or three degrees off the heading. I thought it would just make it easier as far as tracking up-range. Launch - lit the engine and it jumped to about 14° I guess was the first time I saw alpha. Engine came on and no problem. After I got everything squared away, and I noticed this before, #l APU, the source was going down much faster than #2. It was a couple hundred pounds lower than #2, and it kept going down. During the boost I watched and it kept going down. That worried me a little bit. Then I like to find out what the manifold pressures are. One was up to 1050-1100 and that is right. But what is the minimum on the other one? I can't remember which one it is. (Vince - The other one froze up on TM, and I expect it froze up in the cockpit too.) Because I watched it and it was down around 4 or 500, and I thought that is awful low. The engine was rumbling a little bit, and I thought, well, it's going to quit any minute but I am going to let it go. There was nothing else that came on in the cockpit. But that manifold pressure was just too low. Looked at the tank pressures and they were well within limits. I had plenty of time to look around after I got it all squared away, but I kept watching that manifold pressure. Boost guidance, after we got on theta I leveled on theta and had roll hold on by this time, and it was about 1/2° off. Needed about 1/2° left to correct it. I just never got it over there and finally got roll hold on anyway. Boost guidance came down and it looked like it was going to take me low. To begin with, it was below the line and I held theta and it finally came up. Then I flew the boost guidance all the way. Well, in the simulator it had been taking a while to get it wound up, but after it came on then I flew the thing the whole way and we ended up with it trying to climb. (What would you have done had it come in on the top of the thing instead of the bottom?) Oh I would have pulled it up. (.......... you'd believe it then? Did it hold about 37 theta then after.......... ) Yes, yes. It wasn't very long, but I hit theta. That is where it was and I think it was still coming up. (?) Yes, Yes. Then shutdown, it burned out, I did not shut it down. It made about two blurps rather than one when it shutdown. It seemed to shut down awful hard this time. All the way up all I could hear Bill saying was bub, bub, bub, and I could not understand a thing he was saying. After shutdown I got the PAI on and he started to call experiments and I was already there. We got the experiments on, the micrometeorite and the JPL. Held zero alpha all the way up and came level on the top at about 280 as far as my inertials were concerned. The pitch precision needle centered at about that time, and there was no problem at all holding precision pitch, roll and yaw, and it was holding it within a degree. Backing up a little bit, on the way up after we got squared away on alpha and just before theta, there was some beta offset. I called it out but I was having to use a little right rudder to center the beta needle. I assumed that this was just thrust misalignment. After we got on theta there were some roll limit cycles in the system and I could feel it all the way up. After shutdown the system worked real well except that the yaw inputs were a little bit more abrupt than I had figured they would be. Every now and then it would give a pretty good spurt and yank me back over to the heading. I just did not expect it to be that abrupt. Everything else was fairly smooth. I could not feel the pitch nearly as much as I could the yaw. Roll was no problem. Coming back down we got up to 22° and I finally ended up about 24-25° and held that. As we went through 230 I got back to the ball nose. I thought we had a ball nose failure at that time because the alpha meter went full scale. Tape went right off the scale. It finally settled down and we had good ball nose alpha after that. It just took a few seconds to get it squared away. We came up and got the micrometeorite closed and the JPL off, the camera on by 200,000 and held a good 22-23° on the re-entry to 5 g's. Held a good 5 g all the way in. Rounded out and came off of it about the same place we did in the simulator and it leveled at just less than 80,000. I can't tell you exactly what it was reading in the cockpit. We did not climb more than 1000' or so at that point. As soon as you called 50 miles, got 20° speed brakes and we held that all the way in until high key and then closed them. There was some buffet in the turn around, 40,000' turning on to downwind. I pulled it up a couple of times and it was buffet. (... what alpha?) It wasn't very high; 6-7° at the most. (?) I was right around sonic because Bill was calling me that I was going sub-sonic and to watch the alpha. I looked down and I had no more than 5° at that time. When I pulled it in I could not get more than about 7° without getting some buffet. The pattern was big enough. No problem getting it around, and I used some speed brakes to get it down to 180° point. Held about 310 knots all the way around. Got all the circuit breakers in, radiometers off, and flared over the edge of the lake. Flaps down, full forward trim and it did raise just a little. We flew it down to the ground with gear down. This airplane is altogether different than that other airplane. This one I hardly even felt the nose come down. It was pretty light, I had pretty good directional control on the ground. I followed the stripe for a long way and was able to steer it where I have not been able to do that with #2 at all. Slideout, and we ended up probably 30' to the left of the far right strip and at about 170° heading. Altitude was down to 3000' I think. Velocity was, was it zero? I don't remember. It was a good flight all the way around. No other comments. (.......... schedule h dot .......... from Cuddeback?) Yes, pretty well. Pretty well. (?) When we were coming up on alpha and still tracking with the pitching test, it stopped at about 15°. I had a little trim in it, thought at the time, although I may not have had at the time, because I used a little trim getting it down to zero alpha after shutdown. So I may have just taken that out. But it stopped at 15°, and I did come in with trim and it came right on up to 20 some degrees and no problem. It got to 25° and I had to come off the trim to stop it. (Was that on computed alpha?) No, no, we were back on ball nose alpha. (?) No, no. Not here. We were just in transient because when I hit 22° that is where at about 230 I should go to ball nose alpha. Which one we were on I could not tell you. I would say we were on computed alpha. (I have something to say about that, Glenn.)