I've watched it. Many times. I particularly like the view of Earth you get in it at the end. Given that much of the ascent and rendezvous stage was done before that Earth was visible, what use do you think S-Band would have been?
The maneuvers I've linked to above, all happen AFTER Signal Acquired.Here's a time-stamped link to the video with sound track reasonably aligned, referring to the pitch maneuver, with ground control.
https://youtu.be/E2InsDwgcXk?t=655Signal Acquired at 127:51:36 -- dialog begins right after:127:51:42 Armstrong: Okay. You've got me.
<== this matches up to 11:00 in the video link127:52:24 Aldrin (onboard): Pitch up then when we translate up just a little...
So we've got Apollo 11 with "Signal Acquired" but in the Simulation, they forgot to point the dish at the earth.Watch for about a minute - at the end, the dish *might* be pointing at earth -- but as it did all of these maneuvers, it was NOT.
So they *tried* to fix this mess-up for Apollo 12, with a guide-cable to keep it "appearing to track earth" -- but then it snapped... and the "Fling" fiasco happened. So they simply "stopped filming/showing the rendezvous" for all the rest... gave up.
Clearly they judged their audience/context correctly -- people will tend to find a way to believe whatever makes them feel the best. They will simply overlook some glaring mess-ups showing that what they believe is FALSE.
It's how humans are wired. Even the smartest among us.
=== SIMULATION SUGGESTIONS ====
How to simulate this? NASA had HUGE budgets for simulation facilities, which included robotic mechanisms for picking up and maneuvering the LM/AM/CSM. These facilities existed. NASAX simply made use of them after hours, when the "real workers" were away.
NASA had Simulation capability for every mission, every detail... all the way to the Control Room... all in the name of "Simulation/Scenario testing" as real-world as possible. Gene Kranz indicated in his book that the people in the control room couldn't tell the difference between a Simulation and the Real Deal.
This was all NEEDED for the real mission... but since they couldn't land men on the moon, they had to fake, at least that part.
This is the MLH theory, which I find more plausible than the claim that "we landed men on the moon".