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At the time of deployment the crew felt the jolt and heard the bang associated with firing the pyros and severing the hold-down clamp between the spacecraft and the spin table. This jolt has been reported by previous crews. The 41-D crew did not feel any vibration while either satellite was spinning in the payload bay prior to deployment. Ours was the first crew to employ the speaker/microphone setup for air-to-ground and ICOM communications during a deployment. We had an HIU hardline communications configuration available to us at the time; however, we all felt comfortable with the speaker/microphone. We recorded conversation during the terminal portion of the deploy operations on a tape recorder provided as part of the IMAX DTO which we were confident would provide an engineering record of the cockpit voice post-flight if required. Other crews using the speaker/microphone setup without another method of recording voice might elect to go hardline during the last moments prior to deployment to save the voice on the Ops recorder. 

The SBS satellite was equipped with a telemetry package which provides 1 Kbps RF data post-deploy. Since the SMS does not model this package, we had no expectation regarding the ability of the PDI to maintain lock on the spacecraft. We observed that we had good signal strength until several minutes post-OMS separation burn. 

There was the additional requirement to observe the perigee kick motor (PKM) burn of each PAM with the wrist camera on the RMS. This task proved to be fairly easily and expeditiously performed. It also proved to be easy to track the PKM and estimate the burn time using the on-board CCTV monitors. In view of the fact that there are no more PAM vehicles on the manifest equipped with telemetry packages such as was aboard SBS, it is the belief of the 41-D crew that it is reasonable to ask the crew to record video of the PAM PKM burns for engineering data. 

Comments and Observations. It is the opinion of the 41-D crew that the PAM training provided by the crew training division is superior. The model of the PAM's and spacecraft delivered with the 1601 training load were very high fidelity, and during the actual deployments on orbit the crew felt well-prepared to handle any situation which might have arisen. One occurrence worthy of mention was the failure of CRT 2 early on flight day 1 and its potential impact on the deploy operations. It is the opinion of MS2 and MS1 that two CRT's are required to monitor fully and control the deployment activities. We had, therefore, considered how we would operate in the case where only two CRT's were available at the forward station and had concluded that the PLT could operate the Orbiter systems to support the deployment by using CRT 4 and the AFT DAP panel. The crew had practiced in this configuration several times in the SMS prior to the flight. During the actual deployments, the operations seemed quite natural, and the CRT failure was of no consequence. Indiviual crews may discover some other configuration which works as well or better; however, it is the opinion of the 41-D crew that it is worth thinking of how best to operate with CRT failures and to practice in that configuration. 

At approximately 1 hour prior to Telstar deploy, the MCC voiced-up a change to the Alert Responses Cue Card concerning the actions the crew was to take in the event the spacecraft did not mode to internal power. MS1 and MS2 were confused by the change and never fully understood the tecnical rationale until after the flight. There was not time to dicuss the change in detail while it was being made during deploy operations. As it turned out, the subject had come up for discussion on the ground at least 1 day earlier, although it was felt at the time that