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.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead, Houston. Apollo 8.

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.

What does that mean, Ken?

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.

Okay.

Cabin's running a little bit warmer today than normal.

I'm sorry; say it again.

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.

Roger. What kind of temperature are you recording now?

About 78.

I just put the window shades up. That'll cool it down.

Okay.

Do you want me to take the pitch yaw out of RATE COMMAND, right?

That's affirmative. You just put it MINIMUM IMPULSE, and then we'll watch it.

There you are.

Okay. Thank you.

Have fun.

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.

We've done that. And the midcourse correction 4.

Roger.

The midcourse correction number 6 right now looks like zero, and midcourse correction number 7 is approximately 2 feet per second.

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.

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.

That's fine. Let's do that. I've got one right here. I'm lonesome anyway.

Apollo 8, Houston.

Go ahead.

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.

Okay, Ken. I've got them all damped out about as low as I can get them.

Okay. Fine.

I'll put in a roll right now.