Spacelog Apollo 8

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Go ahead, Apollo 8.

Who is this, Ken or Jerry?

Say again, please.

This Ken?

Here's Ken. Go ahead.

Okay, Ken. We are getting back to the PTC attitude. Would you like us to do this high-gain REACQ test now on the first roll?

Affirmative.

Okay. Look, how about if I just went to REACQ right now?

Matter of fact I'm in REACQ. If you want me to stay here, why we'll just press on.

Okay, Apollo 8. That is fine.

I guess this step about stopping in roll 150 really doesn't matter too much then.

That's right, Bill. That was just to let you acquire.

Man, we can acquire on the run here.

Hey, you are getting good at that.

That's all they'll let me do.

Okay. We will keep it here for two REV's, Ken. Frank and—Frank and Jim are asleep, and … so I'll just keep it going here for two rolls.

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Go ahead, 8.

Go ahead, 8.

Well, the REACQ didn't work as advertised. It looked like it went on by the scan limit and into the mechanical limit and followed MSFN around looking, out of the corner of its eye on WIDE BEAM. And when MSFN came back underneath the spacecraft, why it snapped back on it to NARROW BEAM. It apparently never broke lock; or if it did, it was only instantaneously.

Roger. It looked like we did break lock there for about 8 minutes.

Well, we might have broken two way lock, but I was still having about AGC right at the noise level, at the minimum reception level.

Roger.

When we get out here in the clear zone, when we're definitely out of the scan limit, why, I'll go ahead and go to the MANUAL and AUTO lock-on sequence and switch over to REACQ and see what it does next time around.

Roger.

Houston. Were you able to get high bit rate from the OMNI's now, by the way?

Apollo 8, Houston. The OMNI high bit rate capability is noisy, but usable.

Okay. I think what we'll do here is, if I see the high gain definitely going past the scan limit before it gets the mechanical limit, I'll go ahead and ask—you could ask if the REACQ feature hasn't taken over I'll just go ahead and shut it down so that it'll remain in stops.

How's that sound?

We are talking about it now, Bill.

Okay. It's my understanding that the scan warning limit of this thing is supposed to stop tracking; and break of lock, it'll travel on over to the thumb-wheel settings.

Roger. That's my understanding, Bill. We are talking about it right now. I'll let you know in just a second.

Probably, Ken, we are not ever losing the earth's present signal.

That's correct.

Hey, Bill, can you tell us what angles this went through? The curve that we have plotted is apparently the RF limit rather than the mechanical limit; and discussing the function of the AUTO REACQ mode, it looks like it is supposed to shift when it hits the RF limit, which is your—should be your ENTER set of numbers as opposed to the scan warning limit. And if it went inside of that number, could you tell us about what kind of numbers it did go to?

Roger. It went past the caution warning limit to the scan or RF limit, as I understand it. And let me give you a rundown on what it did here.

Okay. Say it slow so I can copy it.

Okay. The antenna went to about 330 to 270 yaw, plus 60 to 80 pitch. Copy?

Roger.

Okay. The AGC dropped off to what I call our noise level, that was the voltage level on the AGC measured at—integrated when the noise broke in. It was about 11 o'clock position on the gage, and it looked like it was switching beam widths there off and on. It would pulse up and down, and a couple of times dropped to full-scale low very briefly.

Okay. You got some marks on that AGC that should register in volts, I believe. Do you have an indication other than 11 o'clock?

Unfortunately, the numbers never got on here. If you will look on that chart that Fred Haise has, it shows one at 11 o'clock position which is the noise level. I don't remember what the voltage was. I might have it on my systems book, though.

Bill, —

When the antenna—when the antenna did snap back in, it went to yaw 60, pitch minus 5, with VERB 64 reading plus 67 for yaw and minus 10 for pitch.

Okay. Yes, copy all that. I think you have four or five marks on that power meter, don't you? From what you are saying, I take it, it's between marks 2 and 4.

Yes. Stand by a second.

Stand by, Ken. I'll tell you what that mode is.

Okay. Thank you.

Closer to 2.4.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

Okay. It's not real clear that it did, in fact, get to the mechanical stop, and if it does, the back room people say we can stay up against that stop for a maximum of 15 minutes without doing any damage. And we would kind of like to track it through one more time as is. We do have the high bit rate capability on OMNI's. So we would like to follow through that same configuration for one more REV.

Stand by.

Well, since we are not sure that it did get up against the mechanical stop last time for 10 minutes or so, I don't think it would be too smart to do it this time because we may end up having to switch field to high gain position.

I am sorry, Bill. You didn't come through. Say again, please.

Since we are not—it is not clear to me that we weren't up against mechanical stops for a while on the last time around. That might account for 10 minutes of that 15 minutes, and there is no sense pushing our luck. I think we ought to—if it starts dropping off again, we just ought to go and put it back into MANUAL and take it back where it belongs. We are still a long way from home, and if that antenna switch fails, it's going to fail the high-gain position, and that's all we got.

Roger, Bill. And we will be making a handoff on stations at 5:5.

Okay.

Ken, we are going to switch COMM carriers here a second.

Okay, thank you.

Belay that. We'll hold this configuration for a while.

Apollo 8, Houston through Honeysuckle.

Roger. Read you five-by.

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

Loud and clear, Apollo 8.

It did the same thing that time, Ken. This time the voltage AGC did drop to full-scale low for several seconds, but the antenna does seem to have the capabilities to look right through the spacecraft, and I guarantee, the earth went where the antenna was not supposed to be able to go.

Okay. I would just like to confirm with you that it never did go back to the present numbers.

No, it apparently never lost earth presence signal. It sounds like it was trying to pick up one-way lock all the time, and we usually hovered around 2-volts AGC except for brief periods.

Okay. Thank you very much.

It looks like if they had—should have not had the … switch into WIDE BEAM until after it had gone to those preset limits.

We are back in AUTO on the OMNI.

Houston, CDR is up and manning the helms. We are going to switch COMM carriers. We'll be off the air for a little bit.

Hey, Ken. This is Frank.

Good morning, sir.

Houston, Apollo 8.

Go ahead, Apollo 8. Loud and clear.

How far are we from home, Ken?

Oh, about 152, looks like. That's pretty gross; I get you a real number in just a minute.

152?

148 550; that's a good number.

Very good.

And your velocity is about 4650.

Increasing, huh?

Houston, Apollo 8.

Go ahead, Apollo 8.

We are trying to get back on our normal sleep cycle, and I just woke up here a little while ago, so I'm going to try to hit the hay again. It'd probably be a good idea to try another Seconal to try to get with it. What do you guys think down there?

Okay. Sounds like a good idea, and if we can get Frank to tell us how much sack time he got, why that'll go in the log, too.

I was in bed for 7 hours, Ken, and I probably slept for about 4-1/2 to 5 hours of it, anyway.

You're getting better. Good.

If you—if you're interested in further reports, we've all had three meals today, and we have drunk a lot of water, and Jim's asleep now. He worked pretty hard this afternoon, but I think we are all in pretty good shape now.