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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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?
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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Matter of fact I'm in REACQ. If you want me to stay here, why we'll just press on.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. That's my understanding, Bill. We are talking about it right now. I'll let you know in just a second.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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?
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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?
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I would just like to confirm with you that it never did go back to the present numbers.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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It looks like if they had—should have not had the … switch into WIDE BEAM until after it had gone to those preset limits.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Oh, about 152, looks like. That's pretty gross; I get you a real number in just a minute.
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Bill Anders (LMP)
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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?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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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.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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I was in bed for 7 hours, Ken, and I probably slept for about 4-1/2 to 5 hours of it, anyway.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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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.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Well, Ken, that just leaves you or I—how about you and I—did anything exciting happen today?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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I think you know about all the things that are exciting up on your end, and it's real quiet down here. Everybody is smiling; Santa was good to most of the folks in the world, and everything is pretty calm, like it should be on Christmas.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Hey, Ken, has anybody got any good idea why that quad A tank is running hot, hotter than the rest by so much?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. I didn't have an answer when I came on; just a second and we'll check again.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Go ahead, Houston.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay, Apollo 8. Let me tell you what the subjects are that we're going over down here: number one, we're making a review of all the entry procedures and this type of information, and we're going to actually go through and review the entry checklist. We have people that are still working on verification of your erasable memory, and we are looking at the EMS problem, and we're discussing the quad temperature, so I'll feed up some of these pieces of information as they come along, and right now we are just sort of having a status review.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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I don't think the EMS is much of a problem; it just jumps when you go into AUTO. I don't believe it will bother us for entry. I—I'm doing the same thing; I am looking over my entry checklist. One of the first things I see here is a coldsoak, and I don't think we want to evaporate between the last midcourse and entry, do we?
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. Looking at the flight plan, you have a P52 coming up at a 115 hours, and we'll have to do another one at 119:45 in preparation for the P23. And it's acceptable with the ground procedures if you would like to delay about 115-hour alignment, and do it just once at 119:45, or you can do it there in flight plan location. If you want to skip the 115-hour alignment we could go ahead and start in on the pitch and yaw free PTC mode at this time.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We have a DTO that requires that we do a PTC and go ahead and do it in minimum impulse mode so that we're not putting any attitude hold corrections in. And we're going to be tracking the attitude excursion, and they want this some—think like 6 hours—or until we reach a limit.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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I say the cabin is running a little bit hotter today than it has been. It looks like this particular PTC alignment gets more sun in the cabin than the PTC before.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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That's affirmative. You just put it MINIMUM IMPULSE, and then we'll watch it.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Roger. And on that quad temperature—the upper limit of that thing is 105 degrees on the bottle. You are well below that. We have been watching it, and it is tracking, although it is tracking very slowly. As you roll the spacecraft, the temperature excursions seem to be a little sluggish, but it isn't a frozen sensor. And talking a little bit more about that one right now, you might tell Jim the next time he goes to work with the optics, when he works with the trunnion, if he'll go ahead and recycle the ZERO OPTICS switch, he can avoid the problem we had prior to midcourse correction 4.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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The midcourse correction number 6 right now looks like zero, and midcourse correction number 7 is approximately 2 feet per second.
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Frank Borman (CDR)
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Okay, Jim. Now we've got on the checklist to initiate cabin coldsoak. This involves evaporating, and I don't think we want to do that.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. Now we talked that over with FIDO, and at 12 hours out, everyone seems to think that we don't need to do it there. But in close, it doesn't seem to have any effect on the trajectory, and what's been suggested if you'd like—we can do over the entry checklist and just kind of walk through it on the air with all the people on the console. Right now, you have the team that will be performing the entry session with you so we can go over the checklist and run down any questions that you might have. That's up to you.
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Ken Mattingly (CAPCOM)
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Okay. We've drifted off now about 25 degrees in pitch. I'd like to have you take it back and set up the PTC plane again at pitch of 10 and yaw 45 and set up the PTC under control, and turn your pitch back to minimum impulse. And give us a mark when you have done that, and we'll time the drift rates down here.
Spoken on Dec. 26, 1968, 3:33 a.m. UTC (55 years, 10 months ago). Link to this transcript range is: Tweet
