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LLTV FRRB transcript (~12 pages, *extremely long*)

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Stuf4

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Jun 11, 2001, 9:58:54 AM6/11/01
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For all the people who expressed interest in reading the transcript of
the LLTV meeting where Conrad and Armstrong describe their experiences
from their recent landings (<4 wks for Conrad), I have decided to just
type it out for everyone. It is extremely long, but I hope you find
it to be engaging.

My favorite aspect of this document is that when I read it, I get the
feeling like I am sitting at the meeting myself - and if I stretch my
imagination, the dialog can give me the feeling that I was right there
for the landings.

*

The best I can decipher:

LMS - Lunar Module Simulator (fixed base trainer)
L&A - (seems to refer to the camera/scene visual system for the LMS)
Lunar(?) & Approach(?) Phase Visual System?

Conrad refers to "Joe or Bud". I am certain that he is speaking of
MSC LLTV checkout pilots Joe Algranti and Bud Ream (perhaps the most
experienced fliers of the vehicle).

Elementary notes:

Conrad often describes being "head's down" or "head's up". "Head's
down" is a standard piloting term for flying on instruments versus
looking out the window and flying visually ("head's up"). One of the
most critical tasks for a pilot to perform during an instrument
landing is to "juggle" these two modes in order to maximize
situational awareness (Conrad critiques his own performance of this).

Armstrong's reference to a "closed loop" process is a standard
engineering term for applying control with feedback looping back to
the control input, such as the incorporation of visual references for
a pilot to make stick inputs. Without correcting for such feedback,
the process is considered to be "open loop".

*

This text is exactly from the original (including typing errors),
except for carriage returns and a few places where I type `[deg] in
place of a superscript circular degree symbol. It has been carefully
proofread to avoid any new typos.

*

LLTV FRRB document:

**********************************************************************


NATIAONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

MANNED SPACECRAFT CENTER

MINUTES OF MEETING

FLIGHT READINESS REVIEW BOARD

LUNAR LANDING TRAINING VEHICLES

HOUSTON, TEXAS

JANUARY 12, 1970


The Flight Readiness Review (FRR) Board convened at 9:00 a.m., c.s.t.,
Room 966, Building 2, MSC, Houston, Texas.

_Board_Members_

Chairman : R. R. Gilruth

Members : C. M. Lee (for R. A. Petrone)
T. H. McMullen (for D. D. Myers)
C. C. Kraft
J. A. McDivitt
M. L. Raines
M. A. Faget
W. R. Hawkins (for C. A. Berry)
S. A. Sjoberg
N. A. Armstrong (for D. K. Slayton)

Secretariat: H. L. Brendle

_Proceedings_

In accordance with the memorandum from the Director of Manned
Spacecraft Center to the Director of Flight Crew Operations dated Jan.
2, 1970, an FRR Board was called for the purpose of releasing the
lunar landing training vehicles for flight. In addition, the third
LLTV was reviewed in order to clear it for flight in support of Apollo
13 and Apollo 14.

The meeting was called to order by the chairman at 9:10 a.m.

Mr. Algranti opened the meeting by summarizing the purpose and agenda
for the meeting.

Dr. Gilruth summarized the history of the LLTV and the need for this
vehicle for training, indicating that at the time of the conception of
the LLTV the real need was not well understood. It was appropriate at
this time to reassess the continued requirement for training with the
LLTV.


**********************************************************************


_Enclosure_2_

I-1

Capt. Conrad's comments:

"I guess I don't have a formal presentation, but I guess the question
is, one, that after we made some lunar landings, is the vehicle a
requirement for training for subsequent crews? And I have to preface
my remarks by saying were I to go back to the moon again on another
flight, I personally would want to fly the LLTV again as close to
flight time as practical.

Now, for the following reasons, I look at the vehicle myself in terms
of our Gemini docking trainer and simulator devices like that and
felt, I think as many people did, that we would have made some
landings before we determine whether we really needed this kind of
training or not, and as you know, I think that our simulators do an
adequate job on formation flying around other vehicles that we don't
need the dynamic docking simulators.

I do feel that we need the LLTV and for the following reasons. I think
the LMS does an outstanding job for sight recognition and basic flying
of the vehicle down to an altitude of 200 feet. At that time, and in
the transition time, the visual and the LMS simulators does not come
into the real world that well.

The LMS is certainly an adequate vehicle to do your instrument
training necessary to land,to go all the way down and land. I'm not
sure that everybody is aware of the fact that the probes on the L&A
normally shuts you off visually at an altitude of about 100 feet and
so you don't get the last part of it, nor do you get the transition
part of flying. It doesn't do the job of flying safe velocities of 80
feet per/sec on down into this area of going into a hover.

The Langley vehicle No. 1, flying it at night, the night lighting does
not even come close to what the moon looks like from my opinion. So
it doesn't make any difference whether you are flying the Langley
A-frame simulator at night time or in the day time. The other thing
that the Langley simulator cannot do is restrain laterally to plus or
minus 25 feet, and the maximum horizontal velocity that I have ever
been able to achieve in the Langley simulator are 10 feet per/sec and
that's nothing. The problem, I feel, is in this flying regime from
500 feet down until the time to get in a hover, and you decide either
that you are going to land visually, or you are going to land on the
gauges.

The problem of determining proper pitch attitude is one that I feel I
got most benefit out of the LLTV, and if you will look at the films
very closely of my landing, you will see some pretty healthy pitch
attitude excursions or changes right down in the area of the heavy
dust and this was strictly when I was going from outside the cockpit
to inside the cockpit.

If you will look at my LLTV landing summary, you will find I went into
backup auto pilot on several lunar sim landings for the plain and
simple reasons, I stayed out of the cockpit and landed on the rear
skids.

I-II

Now, one of the things that I learned that really helped me on the
moon, was to build the confidence in the actual flight vehicle, to put
my head back in the cockpit again.

One of the recommendations that I would make on the LLTV, if we
continue to fly, is that we really put the LM instrumentation as it is
properly arranged in the LM, in the LLTV as much as possible.
Because, the more you fly lunar landings in the LLTV, the more you
will fly them in the cockpit and the better landings you will make
because you cannot determine pitch, either in the LLTV or in the LM.
Pitch is too easy to determine, I think, in the A-frame at Langley,
that's another draw back of Langley.

Gilruth: "You mean you can't determine by looking out the window?"

Conrad: "You can't determine by looking out the window. You've got
to have this confidence, you don't care what you are doing in the LMS.
The last 100 feet you can sit there and fly it all the way down
looking in the cockpit and land. In the LMS you don't have enough
visual simulation to determine pitch anyhow, so you do it all on
gauges in the LMS and that's not real world.

I guess the next thing that I feel,as we continue on the program, is
that we are asking pilots to go into tougher and tougher sites. There
will be smaller areas to land in and I feel that to get the most
benefit out of learning how to translate with the little fuel that you
have, both laterally and horizontally, the LLTV does the job. Now
that sounds a little strange and I'm going to have to qualify that.
As we are constrained to fly the LLTV down the runway, and you
normally don't make large lateral translations with the LLTV; however,
with the wind situation you normally don't get into the lunar sim mode
going down the runway properly and you wind up having to make these
translational corrections laterally to stay on the runway and you got
the-- I think that all of us formerly have wound up out over the grass
somewhere and had to fly it back into the runway.

One of the comfortable things of my landings was to make that lateral
translation, and I put all the confidence, and if you will listen to
the tapes,even Al Bean remarked that about how we were doodling around
in the sky, because he had not flown in a real vehicle. He is not
used to those kind of physiological feelings and sensations that you
get by flying the LLTV,and it's probably one of the more uncomfortable
vehicles to be rolled about 10 or 15 degrees and pitched up about 20
degrees and you don't get that in a Langley simulator either, because
you are at low horizontal velocities and you make a very quick
transition to a hover and come down.

The fact that we are going to get to more difficult sites and the fact
we are taking people continually that have not been there before, and
you look at the number of touch and go landings that anybody treats in
any kind of airplane that they are checking out, we are banking our
whole program on a fellow not making a mistake on his first landing.
To build that confidence, I feel, we should continue to fly the LLTV.

I-III

As I said earlier, I would want to fly it myself if I were to go
again. The more difficult the landing site the more confidence a man
has to have in being able to drive this vehicle. I can't assign a
number to a confidence factor, but the reason I took over initially
was that I thought I was going to overfly the target,and I maintained
a pretty healthy pitch attitude coming into our landing site and made
a rather steep descent. I guess it's in the order of 40 degrees,which
looked straight down,and these all looked perfectly normal to me and
caused me no concern up there, and I base all that on my LLTV
experience,and I can't base it on anything else.

That is just about all I can say and that pretty well pointed out the
drawbacks of other simulators, and I don't feel that we can drop it in
the same manner that we dropped the docking simulator. I think that
it is a dynamic vehicle,and there is no replacement for that type of
training."

Enclosure 2
II-I

After Capt. Conrad's conversation, the following discussion took place
between Dr. Gilruth and Capt. Conrad:

Gilruth: Pete, one of the things you said I think is pretty
significant. That is, that with a vehicle like the LM or the LLTV
it's very difficult to determine pitch attitude, because you don't
have anything up in front of you to line up with the horizon or
anything. In raw, I guess you might get use to having some horizontal
lines you could line up.

Conrad: In the upper part of the window and camera horizon the roll
is relatively easy to keep points level.

Gilruth: So I guess that I would like to ask you if there is anything
that could be done in providing a reference to make it easier to fly?
Is there something that you have thought about?

Conrad: I don't think adding a piece of structure to the vehicle
would do that for the other reason and I didn't discuss the dust. I
guess when everybody went back and engineered out our tapes and all
concluded that the dust really wasn't that bad until we were in the
neighborhood of 30 feet. I was calling this in the area of 50
feet,and all of my altitude callouts were based on what the LMP called
in my ear,and we were reading some 19 feet on the lunar surface on our
inertial platform,and so I was off quite a considerable factor at the
end,percentage-wise,on saying where the dust was.

But the other problem with the dust is the fact that it is a dynamic
moving field that is of varying intensity,and every time you look out
of the window to do something you cannot help but physically be --
your eyes are physically attracted to a darker cloud that just went
off that way, from one that went off that way. And I think that the
two factors on pitch: one, that you don't have it, but if you put a
boom or you put a device out there that would put some structure out
there to give the normal physical clues of pitch, that the dust would
still be distracting whether it obscures the ground or whether it
doesn't obscure the ground, and I felt much more comfortable with my
head in the cockpit. And as I stated, the only reason that I
continued to put my head out of the cockpit was because I, in
retrospect, it was a mistake, and we should have added it to the
checklist, to verify that our horizontal and lateral velocity
indicator was in fact working, and it was.

It's just that up -- high enough. I killed off all of, the lateral
and horizontal velocities,to the point where it was not registering on
the gauges. I probably really wanted that gauge in what Al called out
in my ear in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 feet. When I first looked
at it, and I think the data shows that we were pretty well in a hover
at 50 feet, actual attitude. And had I felt that gauge was working, I
probably would never have looked out that window again,and I was
perfectly satisfied that we were in a clear enough spot that I didn't
need to look out anymore. And the only reason I did, and the other
thing I did, had not gone back to look at my data, and I don't
understand why I made 10 degrees attitude excursions right at the end,
but they were plus or minus, but I don't remember

II-II

which way it was exactly,but the first time that I came back in the
cockpit, I was pitched up 10`[deg], and I leveled it and I looked back
out the window and it was very plain on the film, and I looked back
out the window and I was pitched down 10`[deg] when I brought my head
back in the cockpit and brought the vehicle back level when it was
just about that time --that we got lunar contact.

Now I don't know whether I made control inputs or whether some slosh
actually disturbed the vehicle's yaw and attitude hold mode. I
suspect that I physically put some control inputs in,and I suspect
that I may have done it instinctively when I was looking out the
window thinking I was keeping things level. As I say, you have to
look at the film three or four times, but the pitch experience is very
plain in the film right at the end. The pitch was down the first
time. That's because I went back into the cockpit, and I looked out
the window again,and when the pitch was back up, I put my head back in
the cockpit and leveled away.

It is very difficult to say,and I know that it was a very difficult
thing to do in the LLTV, but I think Joe or Bud will remember. I
think I made my first three landings that went in backup auto pilot in
the LLTV on my training runs just before the flight because of this
pitch attitude,and the only way I can tell in the LLTV is to put my
head in the cockpit. You can't guess it sitting in there and looking
out. As slow as you want to come down, you'll screw it up every time
unless you cross check that attitude ball. You can't convince
yourself to do this properly in the LMS. You just don't have enough
visual,and you pretty nearly fly the last part of the approach in the
LMS on the gauges only,to stay within the constraints so you don't
bomb out the simulator.

As I said in our debriefing, I see no need to change anything in our
procedures. I was extremely well satisfied with our training in all
vehicles as far as landing on the moon went, and I had all the
confidence in the world in the inertial guidance system, which made it
very easy to put my head in the cockpit when I thought I had to do it.
And I would have kept it there the whole time at the end had I
thought that one gauge was working. That is the only recommended
change I see to our procedures.

I felt that -- that I combined . . . I could leave the Langley
simulator out of it completely. If I were going to go again tomorrow,
and I would fly the LLTV as close to flight as practical and I would
stretch it out a little bit too. I think it's good to come back and
fly the vehicle for a certain number of flights in a row. You are
thinking about landing on the moon and this is a complex vehicle. The
LLTV should be as up to speed on its system as possible and not to
interfere with proper training on the LM. It's not that difficult a
vehicle that you can't do it. But I began to run out of gas on that
Sunday, I'd flown nine flights in a row, four of them one day, three
the next day, and two the next day, and we were going to fly again but
the wind was up and I was tired, and I just felt that I was beating
myself to death, with two vehicles and a little less sweat. I would
like to have been able to come home a couple of weekends later and
maybe flown two or three more flights.

II-III

I personally -- I don't know what Neil's feelings are. I think that
we are pretty much in agreement on this though. I understand the
problem of flying close to flight, but you only get one chance. It
will be a long time before we send somebody up there again that's
already been there once and each time you bring a new guy along, you
are putting him in a more difficult landing site and I don't think
there is anything unsafe with our training. I got the decided
impression we might abort out of a possible landing situation that
could be avoided by a man having a little bit more confidence than you
would get out of Langley and the LMS but not having had the LLTV.

This concluded Capt. Conrad's conversation.


Enclosure 2


III-1

The following are Mr. Armstrong's comments:

"Actually,Pete's covered most of the factors and I agree with
everything -- all the points that Pete's made. I'm probably a little
more reluctant to accept an instrument landing than Pete was. One,
because we never did it before and never saw how the instruments
operated,and the second reason, is that I've flown a Doppler radar in
a Ryan's helicopter which had the following interesting
characteristics. (Mr. Armstrong illustrated his point by drawing an
altitude versus velocity bias diagram on the blackboard.) Plot
altitude versus velocity bias, horizontal velocity. So say you came
straight down vertically -- this is zero. At 25 feet you were 0-0,
horizontal velocity and as you came below, your indicators suddenly
said that you had one feet per/sec., two feet per/sec., three feet
per/sec., finally six feet per sec., at zero altitude. And then, if
you were flying 0-0 on the cross pointers, saying if you were flying
zero at instrument landing, you would actually be touching down at six
feet per/sec., horizontal velocity.

McDivitt: Now, Neil, is that a function of altitude, purely, or
altitude rate?

Armstrong: I'm not really sure, Jim. But the important thing is that
it is probably an effect of rotor interference by the helicopter
rotor/engine. Interference into the reflection of the Doppler waves
somehow puts this bias in there. But it probably would not exist in
the LM. I wouldn't be concerned about it, but when you are first
doing something, you think there might be something like flight data
problems somewhere. But I've been exposed to it one time and I knew
that it would be a terrible thing, like in Pete's case. If he ended
up flying 0-0-0 and pulling it right on the moon, and you ended up
with seven feet per/sec., or something like that going sideways.

McDivitt: I think if he had those velocities, dust or not, he would
see it.

Armstrong: Yes, but I was just verifying his point, that one thing is
really important in setting yourself up for a possible instrument
landing, is that you really have to assure yourself that the
instruments you are operating on are correct. Without any significant
bias, and that they don't do something like this to you at the last
minute. I believe Pete had a worse case than I did -- I had a little
less dust, I think -- a significant amount -- a little less problem
than Pete had. I felt that by looking at a few rocks and protrusions
and craters through the moving sheet, I could . . .

Gilruth: You are looking out the window during the last hundred feet
of descent?

Armstrong: Yes, I cross-ehecked back and forth, but I was pretty well
convinced that my instruments seemed to be correct, but I was still

III-2

Looking for maybe something like this to go wrong.

Gilruth: When you are looking out the window, how do you keep . . .
what do you use for a reference?

Armstrong: I agree with Pete. The roll is really fairly easy. Pitch
is always somewhat more difficult. This is something I think that we
all found early in the simulation game. That this was, in fact, true.
It's true in the LLRF. Even though it's to a less extent because
intuitively you would have a lot more with an A-frame around you, and
all that stuff, and a little more information coming into you whether
you want it or not.

Conrad: Yes, and in the LLRF you also get that big boom sticking out
in front.

Armstrong: Yes, that's right. With trim rockets on it, but still in
all, I did pick up an unwanted horizontal velocity to the left during
final phase and got a lot closer to that little double crater than I
wanted to and I really can't account for that. Although, I will
admit, in my case, I was a little spastic in final approach and you
see a lot more attitude changes and throttle changes than you would
like to see. Still all-in-all, I felt very comfortable -- I felt at
home. I felt like I was flying something I was used to and it was
doing the things that it ought to be doing.

Gilruth: You must be controlling the attitude by keeping your drift
low, rather than by the . . .

Armstrong: Yes, you infer it, particularly if you are flying at a
constant pitch angle. You can tell your horizontal velocity and
vertical velocity are related if you are flying along . . . They are
proportionate to each other as you are flying along at a constant
pitch angle so you infer in a close loop fashion vertical velocities
from horizontal velocities that you see over the ground and later on
your horizontal velocity becomes your vertical velocity as you know
you had. It's a closed loop thing, it's probably more a specific way
to gather some of this information but I don't really have a hold on
it. I don't really think it's worthwhile having that additional
information -- it's not necessary. However, it may be useful, but I
don't think it would help as much as having the confidence as in your
own knowledge that you can fly the job in. Our own problem was
getting into a small area. I felt that we would never find a spot
that was good enough to land in. That's a kind of problem that's
impossible to duplicate in the LMS, or in the LLRF. It's even that
difficult to do in the LLTV unless you sort of play the game to
yourself, as you fly into a touchdown area and you say no, I don't
want to land there -- I want to land over there. As you get a little
closer you say no, I really want to land over there, and make yourself
do that. So you have to force yourself to do that problem.

In general, I guess what we all have to ask ourselves is, do we want
to keep buying this insurance policy? We've paid a lot of money to
buy this

III-3

insurance policy to improve our ability to do the landing job, and in
a couple of times, we've had to pay excess premiums. Premiums that we
felt that we were really unwilling to pay or at least to continue
paying. And now, we are at the point where we say maybe, at this
point in time, we don't need to buy the policy at all. Discontinue
the premiums on it and avoid the possibility of these excess premiums
that might burden us in the future with another crash or something
like that. My own conclusion is that we still can't afford not to
insure against this particular catastrophe. A catastrophe of one sort
or another, on final approach at the moon, and I think, we should
continue to buy the policy.

Gilruth: I guess, I agree with you. I've been trying to understand,
from a point of view, trying to understand, the mechanics of flight in
this kind of vehicle and why the flying of an LLTV gives . . . I can
see why it gives you the feeling of confidence because you know that
you have flown something that is as close to a landing, a lunar
landing vehicle, as anybody can devise and so from that point of view
alone, it would give a real feeling of confidence.

Armstrong: It is the only device we've had. The only simulation at
all where you can allow the process to take place,of a closed loop
process where you infer the velocities from attitude, velocities over
the ground, and the actual vertical velocities coming into the picture
at the appropriate velocity. I'm talking of 50 feet per/sec. over the
ground which is the transition phase. That phase from breaking where
you are essentially just watching out the window and predesignating
and doing those things, to come into a hover. That's the 150 feet
per/sec. to 10 feet per/sec. region -- that's where you really have a
lot of flying.

Conrad: In my case, a couple of times, I had to fly off the short
runway. And there were a couple of times, at the end there, I nearly
landed on the axis, but I had to get it stopped and I only had 60
seconds to do it, and it's not a question of saying reset the
simulator. I blew that one. If I landed that LLTV on the grass, I'm
in deep yogurt, and there is no way you can get that confidence, and
you do get yourself in situations in the LLTV that you can't get in
any place else except at the moon.

Gilruth: Yes.

Armstrong: The forcing function of a limited time is in many respects
quite radical. Still it didn't really worry me, because I knew just
what 10 seconds or 20 seconds were in terms of a flight situation.

Gilruth: Any of the group here have any questions or futher
discussions? Jim?

McDivitt: Yes, I have a couple of questions. What is your opinion of
the number of flights needed?

Conrad: I think Charlie's charts pretty well show that. If you want
to, scan some of Neil's flights, and my flights, that show how long it
takes us to lunar sim mode. To really start flying the vehicle
smoothly from when you first go into lunar sim and go in the thing we
. . . and these

III-4

have a very definite tendency to begin to level out after about five
or six flights in lunar sim mode. Now, one problem here is,Neil and I
have been in and out of, Neil more than I have, but Neil and I have
been in and out of the LLRV program,and so when we came into the LLTV
we went through a five flight job or two,and I suspected the schedules
that which they have laid out now, which was what? Thirteen flights
do you have for guys that have never flown before?

Haines: Eleven.

Conrad: What?

Haines: Eleven.

Conrad: Eleven flights and then he goes into . . . You have them all
the way up to 40 before you add that last fully lunar sim mode. At
that point in time, the guy starts training in the lunar sim mode.
This is a problem in the vehicle. There is no doubt about it. You've
got two different vehicles here, flying gimbal lock versus lunar sim.
And you've got a guy that's never flown before. He needs those 10
flights. I agree with that, and I agree with the wind restrictions
and everything else. Once you get the lunar sim mode, you get that
proficiency. I feel that a guy should fly about -- if he's never
flown the vehicle before, I feel that he should fly at least eight
lunar sim flights at some reasonable time period -- like a week, two a
day; or two, one day, and one the next or something, because you've
got to get the hang of that vehicle in lunar sim. And I don't mean
the aerodynamic hang of it either; I mean getting that baby back and
landing it in front of the spot. I don't think that I have the
capability of parking in lunar sim mode from 300 feet,where we
started, right exactly where I wanted to put it. I'd put it within 50
feet or 100 feet, but I don't really know about or future landing
sites, but I'm sure that we are getting into more and more difficult
places to get into, maybe not dust-wise, but the guys are going to
have smaller and smaller spots that they are not going to be able to
overfly 1,000 feet or 2,000 feet -- just go and land it.

Armstrong: Yes, you are always going to have to have the capability
of landing within a specified area.

Conrad: That's pretty hard to do with the LLTV until you fly it quite
a bit, I think.

Armstrong: I think both Joe and Bud have watched a lot of guys fly
up there. . . point out that everyone's experience is probably about
the same as Pete's and myself. That is to say you have to fly about
half dozen lunar sims before you have really seen everything that's
happening. You are flying through it, but it's flying you for awhile,
unless you fly three flights,or beginning to fly it; by the time you
fly half dozen flights, you're flying the vehicle, going where you
want to go and with the instruments.

III-5


Gilruth: How much is that because of a very complicated bunch of
machinery to learn to do it? How much of that goes into actually
learning the control of that kind of a vehicle?

Armstrong: About half and half, in my view. Although, it's really a
simple vehicle, it's nontrivial. You feel the pressure of trying to
keep track of as many things as you can. And the other half is the
fact that it is such a cotton picking unusual environment---so
different from anything you've ever been in before -- that you are
continually amazed at how machines can fly like that.

Conrad: That's what prompted Al's remark. He'd never been in a
vehicle like that, and he didn't look out the window. He probably
looked at the eight ball when I started the left translation, and I
venture to say, I don't think we had more than 10`[deg], at the most,
roll in there. But we were sitting in the neighborhood of 20`[deg] or
25`[deg] pitch. I didn't want to go by the crater, and it upset him,
you know. He made the remark that you really leaned on it,and I told
him that it's O.K. I felt fine. But that's the weirdest feeling in
the whole world flying down that runway in that vehicle with it all
pitched up and rolled over a little bit trying to get it back off the
grass. You can't get that in a Langley simulator. You're not
transitioning out of those kind of velocities. You're not coming from
that kind of altitude. You can't even get a good lateral velocity
going in the Langley simulator -- you will be into the stops.

McDivitt: Dr. Gilruth, you asked a question about how much of that
time is cut just because you are looking at that kind of machinery. I
can't speak for the LLTV, because I have not flown it. But if you
will,look at airplanes. The Air Force and the Navy have standardized
their airplanes on the inside very much. The Air Force flies almost
universally VH and stick grips and they have the same kind of air
speed indicators, and things like that. Most airplanes have dials and
handles and things like that, that are very familiar to pilots when
they check out in new airplanes. It may be a little farther away, but
everytime you check out a new airplane it's a very unfamiliar thing.
Not because the gauges and handles look different, but because it
flies different. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that wasn't what
you find here.

Conrad: First, let me . . . if I go out here and fly a Cessna 310
which I have never flown before, now, I'm an experienced pilot and I'm
behind that airplane or least equal to it. The first couple of times
you go to do that and here stick a guy up there at the moon and expect
him to come down there. I was extremely surprised at the fact that I
stayed as far in front of the LM as I did on the way down. I fully
expected to be further behind on what was going on. And I contribute
that to the total training program, to the LMS, to the LLTV, and I
included in there Langley, because I was auto mode and I came in
about the right time and we do have a good simulation. They can't
beat that L&A for LTV and getting use to starting over where you want
to go, but that L&A falls apart about 200 feet. There is no doubt
about it. But it does an outstanding job.

Gilruth: O.K. Chris?

III-6

Kraft: I guess the only problem I have is, I think some kind of
automative mode, in that period, might make you think a little
differently about it. But, even at that, you've still got to be
prepared.


Conrad: May I comment on that? I went over the simulator in the
program and granted it is not the optimized way in going back into
this auto . . . and I think Gene Cernan and some of the rest of the
boys have spent a lot more time on this little fix right now. You
know they had two different authorities. And I think their conclusion
is that the auto mode kills the horizontal and lateral velocities very
good. But their vehicle gets pretty spastic since you have large ones
in there. And they all agree, at the end, whether you are on the
gauges or at the window, you had better have things in relatively good
shape before you go back to the auto mode.

Kraft: But I still think even, you know, if when you have this auto
mode, I think it's going to make you feel a lot more comfortable about
landing sites.

Conrad: Well, I agree with what you're saying, but I would go back
tomorrow with what I had.

Kraft: Oh, sure you would. But, I think once you are given that mode
that you are going to do precisely what you just described. You are
going to kill off all those velocities and get it going where you want
to go, and you will put that thing into auto and then monitor it down.
I just think that -- would change your feeling about the LLTV but
even at that you have got to be prepared . . .

McDivitt: Chris, that auto mode is not doing us much good. These
guys just got through discussing those auto modes and the
complications in flying straight down with it.

Kraft: It's not going to do that at a higher altitude as a result of
having the auto mode.

McDivitt: Yes, I know there are a number of phases to this thing.
Auto mode only takes care of the lunar phase and hardly takes care of
the landing part at all.

Lee: That probably works fine in a simulator, but if this bias you
were talking about happened to get in there -- it could cut the auto.
So you would have to (cannot decipher from the tape).

Kraft: I don't deny that, but I don't buy that bias bit.

Conrad: I think our photographs show that we really have it as about
as close to zero in any direction you can get or at least I didn't see
any indications of skidding in any direction. And I understand that
the inertial system was showing a 1.7 feet per/sec. forward. And I
don't believe that we had that. I believe that, that bias was really
the inertial system.

III-7

Kraft: Yes, it is and you can expect that. It's going to be around
two or three feet per/sec. Did that come in?

Conrad: I don't remember any numbers over two feet per/sec. I looked
at a paper,just before we went, that went through all the phases that
were manual,that were a fallout of P65 and what you can expect. You
could expect to stay within the landing envelope,and all of them
showed you could, and I didn't remember any number over two feet
per/sec. I also did understand that we did,right at the end,get some
false radar data. But that is going to be taken care of -- I
understand. The radar goes off at 50 feet, is that right? And that
will probably improve it.


**********************************************************************


End notes:

Conrad states, "They can't beat that L&A for LTV...". I am guessing
that LTV is the LMS television system. I do not know.

In the discussion of how many flights are needed to train new pilots,
Conrad makes the statement, "Eleven flights and then he goes into . .
. You have them all the way up to 40 before you add that last fully
lunar sim mode." There were often sorties where two takeoffs and
landings were performed, but I think that it would have been
impossible to get 40 takeoff and landings in 11 sorties. My best
guess is that here Conrad breaks his sentence to point to a chart that
shows where the MSC check pilots get 40 fixed-gimbal flights prior to
flying with the lunar sim mode.

If anyone would like a hardcopy of the chart that graphs the flight
history of the LLRV/TV program, just email me with your street
address. If I remember correctly, this chart was "Enclosure 1" of the
document.

*

There is a memo from Deke Slayton (dated Jun 3 1970) that confirms
that it was at this LLRV Flight Readiness Review where "... it was
determined that astronaut training in the LLTV would be recognized as
a constraint to future Apollo lunar landing flights."


~ CT

John Geenty

unread,
Jun 11, 2001, 10:17:17 AM6/11/01
to
> L&A - (seems to refer to the camera/scene visual system for the LMS)
> Lunar(?) & Approach(?) Phase Visual System?

Landing & Approach. Other than that, interesting stuff.


Stuf4

unread,
Jun 11, 2001, 2:21:11 PM6/11/01
to
"John Geenty" <Jo...@geenty.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message news:<9g2jtc$7e1$1...@news5.svr.pol.co.uk>...

> > L&A - (seems to refer to the camera/scene visual system for the LMS)
> > Lunar(?) & Approach(?) Phase Visual System?
>
> Landing & Approach. Other than that, interesting stuff.

That is the first thing I thought of, but the standard (piloting)
terminology is Approach and Landing ('cause the approach comes before
the landing). I have heard the term "Lunar Phase" of the descent -
before the LM hits High Key, I believe - so this is why
"Lunar&Approach" became my best guess.

Another reason I didn't go with "Landing" (besides the backward
sequence) is because of Conrad's explanation of how useless the L&A
was for landing. I don't think the TV camera system was advertised
for landing the LMS.


~ CT

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