**109:27:05** Aldrin: Okay. You\'ll have to pay out all the LEC. It
looks like it\'s coming out nice and evenly.

**109:27:13** Armstrong: Okay. It\'s quite dark here in the shadow and a
little hard for me to see that I have good footing. I\'ll work my way
over into the sunlight here without looking directly into the Sun.

*\[Armstrong, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"It is very easy to see
in the shadows after you adapt for a little while. When you first come
down the ladder, you\'re in the shadow. You can see everything
perfectly; the LM and things on the ground. When you walk out into the
sunlight and then back into the shadow, it takes a while to adapt.\"\]*

*\[Aldrin, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"In the first part of the
shadow, when you first move from the sunlight into the shadow, when the
Sun is still shining on the helmet as you traverse cross-Sun, you\'ve
got this reflection in your face. At this point, it\'s just about
impossible to see anything in the shadow. As soon as you get your helmet
into the shadow, you can begin to perceive things and to go through a
dark-adaptation process. Continually moving back and forth from sunlight
into shadow should be avoided, because it\'s going to cost you some time
in perception ability.\"\]*

**110:21:24** Aldrin: I\'ve noticed several times in going from the
sunlight into the shadow, that just as I go in, I catch an additional
reflection off the LM that, along with the reflection off my face onto
the visor, makes visibility very poor just at the transition (garbled)
sunlight into the shadow. I essentially have so much glare coming onto
my visor (garbled) shadow until (garbled) helmet actually gets in the
shadow. Then it takes a short while for my eyes to adapt to the
different lighting conditions. (Garbled) inside the shadow area,
visibility, as we said before, is not too great, but with both visors up
(garbled) you can certainly (garbled) what sort of footprints we have
and the general condition of the soil. Then, after being out in the
sunlight a while, it takes \... Watch it, Neil! Neil, you\'re on the
(TV) cable.

**110:22:40** Armstrong: Okay.

*\[As can be seen in the shadows in the 16-mm film, Neil has been at the
[MESA](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/ap_g-h_mesa.gif),
getting the
[scoop](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/tools/judy26.jpg)
with which he will collect the [bulk
sample](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/images11.html#neilcuf),
a non-selected sample of rock and soil. He has gone a short way north of
the LM to get his first sample. Buzz comes over to help him get
untangled.\]*

**110:22:41** Aldrin: Yeah. Lift up your right foot. Right foot. It\'s
still\...Your toe is still hooked in it.

**110:22:45** Armstrong: That one?

**110:22:46** Aldrin: Yeah. It\'s still hooked in it. Wait a minute.
Okay. You\'re clear now.

**110:22:51** Armstrong: Thank you.

*\[The TV cable has been coiled up inside the LM for several weeks and,
since being pulled out during the TV deployment, retained memory of the
loops it had in storage. The cable loops are visible in
AS11-40-[5875](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/images11.html#5875h).\]*

*\[Paul Coan, Manned Spaceflight Center Television Subsystem Manager who
was responsible for the equipment used on the Apollo spacecraft, writes,
\"We were concerned about how much volume the 100-foot lunar TV cable
would occupy in the LM.Ê So, Westinghouse worked out a clever double
figure-8 pattern for stowing it in a box to minimize the volume.Ê
Technicians had to be trained to place the cable in the box using this
pattern.Ê Because of weight considerations, the box was never used
except for transportation of the cable.Ê For the missions, Grumman
worked out the stowage of the cable.Ê I donÕt recall if they used the
double figure-8 pattern.Ê*

**110:22:55** Aldrin: (Approaching the MESA) Now, let\'s move that over
this way. (Pause as Buzz gets the cable out of the way) Okay. I\'ve got
it. (Long Pause)

*\[As Buzz comes over to the MESA, Neil turns to face him and, when Buzz
suggests that they get the cable out of the way, Neil lifts the cable
with the scoop he is carrying and extends the cable so that Buzz can
take hold of it. Andy Chaikin has captured a series of [16mm frame
details](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11tvcable16mm.jpg)
from Mark Gray\'s [Apollo 11 DVD set](http://www.spacecraftfilms.com/).
The first frame (top left) shows Buzz at the right and Neil at the right
with the TV cable on his scoop as indicated by the green arrow. In the
second frame (top right), Neil has raised the scoop high enough for Buzz
to grab the cable, which is indicated by two green arrows. In the
remaining frames, Buzz moves the cable out of the way toward the
left.\]*

**110:23:05** Aldrin: (With the cable in hand) Okay. I\'ve got it. (Long
Pause)

*\[A [full
frame](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11f1102237.jpg)
shows Buzz moving left with the TV cable. A [second full
frame](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11f1102240.jpg)
shows the TV cable more clearly. In a [third
frame](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11f1102243.jpg)
Buzz appears to be pulling the cable into a more-or-less straight line
past the flag before getting the excess out of the way under the
spacecraft.\]*

*\[Aldrin - \"This is one of the pitfalls of testing things in one g
that you\'re going to use in reduced-g, because I\'m sure that when we
uncoiled the cable in one g it would lay flat. But not so there (on the
Moon). There may be other reasons why it took a set, but it did not want
to lay flat. It was just a trap when you hook a foot into it, because
you can\'t see it too well\"\]*

*\[Armstrong - \"You really can\'t see your feet.\"\]*

*\[Aldrin - \"The same sort of thing came up later on, with the leveling
[BB](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/apollo.glossary.html#BB)
(on the seismometer). The experiment (originally) had a fluid bubble,
but they came up with a new and different way of doing it. It had a
depression with a BB in it, because they didn\'t want to deal with the
fluid for some reason. Well, when I looked down at it, the damn thing
was just going around and around and around at the top. It wouldn\'t do
that in one g because it would be pulled down from there. (So, both the
TV cable and the leveling BB demonstrate that), if you build something
and it\'s a little different and you test it in one g, that isn\'t the
way it\'s going to perform, necessarily, at one-sixth.\"\]*

*\[Armstrong, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"The TV was operated as
planned with no particular difficulties. The one thing that gave us more
trouble than we expected was the TV cable; I kept getting my feet
tangled up in it. It\'s a white cable and was easily observable for a
while. But it soon picked up the black dust which blended it in with the
terrain, and it seemed that I was forever getting my foot caught in it.
Fortunately, Buzz was able to notice this and keep me untangled. Here
was good justification for the two men helping each other. There was no
question about that, either; he was able to tell me which way to move my
foot to keep out of trouble. We knew this might be a problem from our
simulations, but there just was no way that we could avoid crossing back
and forth across that cable. There was no camera location that could
prevent a certain amount of traverse of this kind.\"\]*

*\[Aldrin, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"Neil initially pulled out
about 20 feet of cable and, then, I pulled out the rest of it. It seemed
to reach a stop; it seemed to have a certain amount of resistance, and I
thought that was the end of the cable. However, when I pulled normal to
the opening, I found that I could then extract the cable to the point
where I saw the black and white marks on it. The cable, being wound
around the mounting inside the MESA, developed a set to it so that, when
it was lying on the surface in one-sixth g, it continued to have a
spiral set to it which would leave it sticking up from the surface 3 or
4 inches. It would be advantageous if we could get rid of that some
way.\"\]*

*\[Armstrong, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"Your foot is
continually going underneath it as you walk, rather than over the top of
it.\"\]*

*\[Aldrin, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"One time when Neil did
get the cable wrapped around his foot, the cable very nearly wrapped
itself over the top of the tab on the back of the boot. That created a
problem in disentanglement. I don\'t know whether it\'s worth moving
that tab or not.\"\]*

*\[One of Neil\'s photos of Buzz and the flag, AS11-40-
[5875](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/images11.html#5875h)
shows the loops in the TV cable.\]*

*\[Like Neil and Buzz, the Apollo 12 and 14 crews had a continual
problem with the TV cable and with the cable for the large,
umbrella-shaped S-band antenna which they erected on each of the
missions. For the J missions, the TV camera and high-gain camera were
mounted on the Rover and there were, of course, no cables connecting the
Rover comm system to the LM. The changeover to the wireless, Rover-based
comm eliminated cable problems around the LM. However, later crews had
to contend with connecting cables on the much more elaborate arrays of
scientific gear that they deployed and, on one occasion during the
Apollo 16 ALSEP deployment, a cable was actually torn loose, disabling
the experiment.\]*

**Video Clip** [(50 sec;
3.1Mb)](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11.v1102332.mov)

**Time Lapse Video Clip**
[(5.2Mb)](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11.v11023tl.mov)

**110:23:32** Aldrin: The blue color of my boots has completely
disappeared now into this\...Still don\'t know exactly what color to
describe this other than (a) grayish-cocoa color. It seems to be
covering most of the lighter part of the boot (garbled) color that
(garbled) very fine particles. (Garbled).

*\[Buzz is about to perform the boot penetration task, \"Pene-Photo
Footprint\" task on his
[checklist](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/images11.html#buzzcuf)
and will be using the Hasselblad camera. Neil put it down on the MESA
earlier, and Buzz picks it up at some point between 110:23:54, when we
last see Buzz approaching the MESA without the Hasselblad ( [16 mm
frame](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/a11f1102354.jpg)),
and 110:25:17, when Buzz re-appears with the Hasselblad in his right
hand.\]*

*\[Neil continues to collect samples in general vicinity of the MESA.\]*

*\[Armstrong, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"The bulk sample took
longer than in the simulations because the area where the bulk sample
was collected was significantly farther from the MESA table than the way
we had done it in
[training](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/A11CrewTraining.html).
The MESA table was in deep shadow and collecting samples in that area
was far less desirable than collecting them out there in the sunlight
where we could see what we were doing. In addition, (by going farther
from the MESA) we were farther from the exhaust plume and the
contamination of propellants. So I made a number of trips back and forth
in the sunlight, and then carried the sample back over to the scale
where the sample bag was mounted. I probably made 20 trips back and
forth from sunlight to shade. I took a lot longer, but by doing it that
way, I was able to pick up both a hard rock and ground mass (soil) in
almost every scoopful. I tried to choose various types of hard rocks out
there so that, if we never got to the [documented
sample](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/images11.html#S6932235h),
at least we would have a variety of types of hard rock in the bulk
sample. This was at the cost of probably double the amount of time that
we normally would take for the bulk sample.\"\]*

**110:28:22** Aldrin: As I look around the area, the contrast, in
general, is\...comes about completely by virtue of the shadows. Almost
(garbled) looking down-Sun at zero-phase very light-colored gray, light
gray color (garbled) a halo around my own shadow, around the shadow of
my helmet.

*\[Buzz is following his
[checklist](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/images11.html#buzzcuf)
in making comments about the lighting. The halo around Neil\'s shadow is
shown best in AS11-40-
[5930](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/images11.html#5930h),
a picture that starts a pan he takes while Buzz is off-loading the
science packages from the back of the LM.*

DEPLOYING THE LASER REFLECTOR (OR PSE, I'm NOT SURE):

*\[Aldrin, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"In going through the
numbers of pulling the little lanyards, everything progressed as neat as
can be. The handle deployed upward and rotated around, even though I
wasn\'t able to see it fit into its slot. This is the maneuvering handle
on the PSE (Passive Seismic Experiment). I might point out that the
flight article was different in configuration than the training package,
the difference being that you couldn\'t see when the handle was out and
locked in its detent as well on the flight package as you could on the
training package. Anyway, this worked out quite well. Orienting the
package in azimuth was quite easy. The shadow of the gnomon stood out
quite well in our session in the lab with the flight packages. We had
had some concern as to just how well this shadow was going to stand out
against this silver surface. However, all three of the pins in the
gnomon were quite clear. I won\'t say they were a very crisp shadow, as
there was a little bit of fuzziness to them (because of the finite size
of the solar disk), but it was quite easy to determine where the center
of it was and get it oriented at the 45-degree mark.\"\]*

COMMENTS ABOUT THE LAY OF THE LM'S SHADOW

*\[That is, the spacecraft is facing about 13 degrees south of west.\]*

*\[Aldrin, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"I want to inject a
thought about spacecraft location in respect to lunar surface working
conditions. Putting the area of the MESA in shadow also put the (TV)
cable in the shadow. The white cable, being covered with a little bit of
this powdery stuff and being in the shadow, was very difficult to
observe. Consideration should be given to keeping any cable or small
object out in sunlight whenever possible. It leads one to think that, if
you\'re going to yaw one way or the other, it\'s preferable to put your
working areas out into the sunlight.\"\]*

*\[The unintended left yaw put the MESA farther into the LM shadow than
it would have been otherwise.\]*

*\[Armstrong, from the 1969 Technical Debrief - \"We discussed -
pre-launch, on a number of occasions - whether we wanted to yaw
specifically for lighting at touchdown. There are obviously a lot of
advantages, but I was very reluctant to do any fancy maneuvering on the
first lunar touchdown for selected yaw for lighting considerations. I
figured we\'d just take what we got; and we paid for that later, because
we had a lot of operations in the shadow during the EVA that would have
been easier had we had better lighting.\"\]*

*\[Readers should note that this quote differs from the one originally
transcribed by NASA. Neil provided the correction in 1995.\]*