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.

Thank you.