Spacelog Apollo 11

Apollo 11, Houston. We're still unable to pick you up on the high gain antenna. Request you go to MANUAL, and wide beamwidth. The pitch and yaw angles in your checklist are good ones. You should be able to find us there. Over.

Houston, Apollo 11. How do you read now?

11, Houston. Loud and clear this time. How me?

Loud and clear. You faded out on your last transmission. Over.

Roger. Are you in wide beam now?

Negative. I got you locked back on again REACQ and narrow.

Roger. That's all we want. We want to stay in narrow, and we're a little puzzled about why we lost you here a few minutes ago. Do you have any ideas?

No, we sure don't (cough)—sure don't. We're showing—we're showing about 15 degrees plus pitch and about 270. That ought to be good and clear.

We concur there. We still don't have any good ideas on why we were lost then.

11, Houston. Would you confirm that we did acquire automatically when you came around the limb for this passage. Over.

That's confirmed.

Apollo 11, Houston. Over.

Houston, Apollo 11.

11, Houston. On your AUTO RCS SELECT switches, we show quad Bravo disabled but quad Charlie only partially disabled. Charlie 3, I believe, is the only one you have selected off. Is that correct?

Yes. Roger. That's correct.

Roger.

How do they look to you now, Houston?

11, Houston. We see them all disabled at this time. Thank you.

Apollo 11, Houston. Over.

Go ahead, Houston.

11, Houston. We're going to try to check out this ability to automatically reacquire on the S band, and what we want to do is to secure our uplink carrier for about 30 seconds. Then we will turn it back on and see if the spacecraft equipment will automatically reacquire. So if you do not get a call from us within about 3 minutes, that means we have not been able to reacquire and request your assistance on a manual acquisition. Over.

Okay. We understand.

11, Houston. We also would appreciate—if you will note the angles that the antenna tracks through in its attempt to reacquire. Over.

11, Houston. It looks like we're locked back up again with no delay. How does it look on board? Over.

Roger. The signal strength dropped very rapidly to zero; and the pitch and yaw, in about 3 seconds, moved toward 40 degrees pitch and 240 degrees yaw. Right now, they're sitting on about 15 degrees pitch and about 265 degrees yaw. So they didn't move very far, about 30 degrees apiece; and then they picked right back on up again. Over.

Roger. Some of “The Luckiest People” in the background there. We copied your pitch and yaw angles.

11, Houston. Could you give us the location of your—pitch and yaw location of your position indicators? Over.

Roger. They're in the same position as the antenna right now; plus 15 degrees pitch and—no, now wait a minute. I got them—got it at about 275 instead of 265.

Okay. Thank you.

11, Houston. We'd like to try the same procedure once more. We'll leave the carrier a little longer and be back up for a call within 4 minutes. Over.

11, Houston. We're locked back up again. Can you give us a report on how the antenna behaved?

Roger. It was essentially identical as before. The pitch went to 45, 40 to 45 and the yaw went to about—to about 255, 245 to 255; and then it rather quickly locked up at 15 degrees pitch and 270 yaw. Over.

11, Houston. Roger. Your angles are 45 and 255. Do I understand that as soon as the carrier dropped, it went to these angles; or did it only go to these angles after the uplink carrier was reenabled and the antenna began to reacquire? Over.

No. As soon as the carrier dropped off, why, it drifted over into those angles and stayed there. Then when it came back up again, why, it hunted around for a while, but it didn't get any further off. Gradually brought it on in to the angles where it is right now; and then the signal strength would take several jumps as evidently it goes from wide to medium to narrow. Over.

11, Houston. Understand. And on another subject, request you zero your optics for the night. Over.

Apollo 11, Houston. Can you confirm that you have changed the CO₂ filter as per flight plan in the last hour? Over?

No. We're still eating. We're about to do it. We'll let you know.

Roger, 11. And we've got about 14 minutes until LOS. AOS is 86 30, an hour away. We're wondering whether or not you plan to have one man up at that time or would you all like to be asleep inside the next hour? Over.

Somebody will be up.

Roger. The thing that we're still puzzling on is the antenna, and if—as long as there will be somebody up, why, we would like to have somebody check the automatic REACQ on the next AOS.

Okay. We'll do that. We haven't chlorinated the water yet, and we haven't changed the lithium hydroxide. We're just still finishing up dinner.