DB Cooper

[georger 268]

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Balloon Dad sounds like really bad news Georger.

I guess we are lucky he didn't actually launch Balloon Boy Falcon. I'll bet it had more to do with inadequate lifting capacity than good judgment.

When I was a kid I saw a movie about a kid who somehow ends up in a runaway gas balloon. It might have been made in Europe. They had a military parachutist try to get aboard. I can't find the movie. Maybe Snowmman can.

377

I keep lookingfor technical details
on Heene's ballon but cant find anything ....
so I attached the few pics I can find to my orig.
post ...

[snowmman 3]

georger posted:

Quote

edit: photos added. Note the 1/4" mahogany
underlayment floor and cardboard duc taped
door to the balloon compartment - two
9volt batteries were found in the 5 gallon bucket.

now georger is talking my language. The insane little details matter.

When I was a kid, I remember being enthralled with the idea of ordering one of those submarines from the back of the comic books. There was a big lake by my house, that would be perfect.

Took me a while to realize they were cardboard.
The web has everything: the original ads here:
(Polaris submarines...I don't remember the rocket ships.

oh wow...besides the ads, this page has a picture of an actual kid in an actual Polaris Sub..from 1967. I never saw one before. $6.98. Over 7 feet long! 10 day Free Trial!

http://www.irememberjfk.com/mt/2008/01/giant_rockets_and_subs_in_comi.php

Did anyone ever know someone who actually ordered the Polaris Nuclear Sub?

[skyjack71 0]

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When I was a kid, I remember being enthralled with the idea of ordering one of those submarines from the back of the comic books. There was a big lake by my house, that would be perfect. Did anyone ever know someone who actually ordered the Polaris Nuclear Sub?

No, but you sure made me think of my brother and his comics and magic tricks,

You know that a man actually considered taking or took some kind of personal underwater craft into Lake Merwin looking for Cooper. I have corresponded with Martin Woodard who did a lot of the searching of the waters for Richard Tosaw...I know he did some diving but I didn't ask him if he was the one who had the submarine. He does not live in the states.

Maybe I should see if he is still around and see if he will make a post about his searching - I know that a few yrs ago he was still diving for treasure.

Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 2013, 2014, 2015 by Jo Weber

[snowmman 3]

I thought it was interesting the FAA said they don't have any radar of the 50 mile flight.

They are relying on pilot testimony to recreate the flight path.

Surprising, since mylar is used for radar dummy stuff..

They were close to an airport. I wonder why they didnt' see it.

Hey: maybe the balloon really is a good Al Qaeda drone.....

[georger 268]

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I thought it was interesting the FAA said they don't have any radar of the 50 mile flight.

They are relying on pilot testimony to recreate the flight path.

Surprising, since mylar is used for radar dummy stuff..

They were close to an airport. I wonder why they didnt' see it.

I picked up on that too. Puzzeling.

[snowmman 3]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/21/terrorism.probe/index.html

I thought Zazi was the leader of the Al-Qaeda teams and everyone was his disciple.

Now there's this Mehanna guy.

Strange set of accusations.
No "stuff". No guns or bombs or anything.

But they say "the conspiracy" lasted 7 years..from 2001 till 2008.

He was arrested a year ago after being accused of lying to FBI agents in a terror investigation. (this seems to be the favorite charge. Reminder to self: Never say anything to an FBI agent. There is no benefit to anyone).

Apparently Mehanna watched jihadi videos and encouraged others to watch them. He travelled in the mideast and tried to join training camps. Evidently failed?

But it ends with the same thing: they go thru a long list of claims about this guy, but end with "No worries, there's no cell".

"I think we're satisfied that we know every member of this group," the attorney said. "We do not believe that there are any terrorist cells in this area."

I thought this was funny: "hoped to kill one or two members of the executive branch of the U.S. government"

it's like he couldn't decide what he'd like? Now that's a conspiracy.

Sounds like the classic redneck sitting around bullshitting.
Except he didn't have any weapons! Not a redneck!

(edit) the classic neighbor reaction piece:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/10/sudbury_neighbo.html

"McManus, who spoke with Mehanna’s father after his son was arrested last year on lesser federal charges, said the new, more serious charges against Mehanna have shocked him. “I can’t believe there’s a terrorist living across the street,’’ he said. “You wouldn’t have thought it."

[377 22]

Great analogy to redneck bullshitting, except they rarely get arrested as terrorists.

I am going to sleep even better with Mehanna under arrest along with Zasi. Whew. Glad they got Mehanna before he got weapons and created cells. Preemptive strikes against pre terrorists, makes a lot of sense.

Wasn't there a guy named Bin Laden who they were looking for? Remember him?

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

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Great analogy to redneck bullshitting, except they rarely get arrested as terrorists.

I am going to sleep even better with Mehanna under arrest along with Zasi. Whew. Glad they got Mehanna before he got weapons and created cells. Preemptive strikes against pre terrorists, makes a lot of sense.

Wasn't there a guy named Bin Laden who they were looking for? Remember him?

377

they say he contacted gangs to get assault weapons (what is he, dumb? just go to a gun show)..but they gave up their plans when they found they could only get handguns.

I do agree that anyone who wants to be a terrorist, can be more likely to be successful by just arming up at a couple gun shows, and then going and spraying.

The thing that keeps us safe, is mostly that people don't want to do that. We're lucky that's true.

I think people forget how much real violent crime with guns and bombs gets done every year in the US.

It's like it's worse if you bullshit about it, now.

I agree that it's very good to stop violent crimes. I'm just not seeing the connection.

Maybe we need to invade some place in the US?
(edit) Like where I live. Like I said before, I was surprised to discover I live in an area with more liberal open-carry laws than Texas.

Did anyone see that news blip where a guy found a used US rocket launcher recently on his property? Pretty funny:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6668884.html

[377 22]

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I thought it was interesting the FAA said they don't have any radar of the 50 mile flight.

They are relying on pilot testimony to recreate the flight path.

Surprising, since mylar is used for radar dummy stuff..

They were close to an airport. I wonder why they didnt' see it.

Remember the Project Mogul balloon used to explain the Roswell "UFO" debris? It carried a string of corner cube radar reflectors suggesting that balloons may be poor radar targets.

377

I picked up on that too. Puzzeling.

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[nigel99 610]

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I thought it was interesting the FAA said they don't have any radar of the 50 mile flight.

They are relying on pilot testimony to recreate the flight path.

Surprising, since mylar is used for radar dummy stuff..

They were close to an airport. I wonder why they didnt' see it.

Remember the Project Mogul balloon used to explain the Roswell "UFO" debris? It carried a string of corner cube radar reflectors suggesting that balloons may be poor radar targets.

377

I picked up on that too. Puzzeling.

Balloons are poor reflectors due to their lack of flat surfaces or sharp corners. They are also helped by the fact that the surface is convex and tends to scatter the incident waves effectively reducing the Radar Cross Section (RCS). Obviously material reflectivity also plays a part.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[georger 268]

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I thought it was interesting the FAA said they don't have any radar of the 50 mile flight.

They are relying on pilot testimony to recreate the flight path.

Surprising, since mylar is used for radar dummy stuff..

They were close to an airport. I wonder why they didnt' see it.

Remember the Project Mogul balloon used to explain the Roswell "UFO" debris? It carried a string of corner cube radar reflectors suggesting that balloons may be poor radar targets.

377

I picked up on that too. Puzzeling.

Balloons are poor reflectors due to their lack of flat surfaces or sharp corners. They are also helped by the fact that the surface is convex and tends to scatter the incident waves effectively reducing the Radar Cross Section (RCS). Obviously material reflectivity also plays a part.

Then how about geese and ducks, which do show
up on radar?

[377 22]

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Then how about geese and ducks, which do show
up on radar?

I think it has to do with density differences between air and target. I have seen birds hundreds of times at distances exceeding 3 miles on 5 KW boat X band radars. Furnuno sells a so called BIRD RADAR (S band) that are used by tuna boats to spot bird flocks at distances of over 20 miles.

I spoke with a bird researcher in Hawaii who was using Furuno radar to track bird movements. He said that he regularly got returns from insect swarms at distances of several miles when the air was calm. He figured it out by observing and corellating close range echos visually with evening insect swarms.

Most people would think a Pelican to be an ideal stealth aircraft, but they have a very big RCS and show up great on simple low power (2-5KW) boat radars.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

Snowmman Industries was contracted to hijack a Northwest Airlines jet, near an airport like PDX, as part of a test of the Flight 305 event.

Rather than 377's test dummy, we did a real hijack plus jump.

News here. It sounds like the FBI has, once again, tried to cover things up though. They're saying the 150 miles during which SI pwned the plane, was "something else".

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/10/22/airliner.fly.by/index.html

The hijacker wore a t-shirt that said "Duane Lives!" on the front, and "40mm on sale now!" on the back.

We picked Minneapolis in honor of georger's musings about Soderlind and the central hub of NW operations back in 1971.

[377 22]

That side door jump from the Airbus was a lot tougher than a 727 ventral door exit.

Tell us about your jumper Snow? How much did SI pay him? Was Sherwin Williams involved?

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

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That side door jump from the Airbus was a lot tougher than a 727 ventral door exit.

Tell us about your jumper Snow? How much did SI pay him? Was Sherwin Williams involved?

377

he got $750. I told him he was getting $50 over normal because it was last minute.

He said he had a grudge. I said "Who doesn't?"

He asked "What if I leave fingerprints?"

I said "You mean you think they will catch you? Just don't talk no jihadi smack. They'll lock you up for reading those books"


I was actually reading one of these jihadi blogs last night, since I hadn't really seen how these guys talk.

It's interesting. it's not much different than some fundamentalist religion folks. (I guess that's what it is). The problem is they have this historical legacy of war, and that's what sucks all the young guys in...it gives them a mission, and heck, everyone loves a mission in life.

But they drone on and on with all these phrases and references to people from long ago. It's amazing they keep all the references correct.

[377 22]

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I was actually reading one of these jihadi blogs last night, since I hadn't really seen how these guys talk.

Now that they have your IP address all you need to do is inquire about training camps and you'll be the next Zazi. Pre-terrorism must be stopped.

Religion... Could Cooper have had a religious grudge or motive?
Tina sought refuge in religion, but refuge from what?

Naww, Cooper was just a crook. Occam told me to stop getting needlessly complex.

Isn't it amazing that Bin Laden still runs free? Last time I checked the reward was over $30,000,000.00. I thought for that much money nobody was safe from betrayal. I was wrong.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

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Isn't it amazing that Bin Laden still runs free? Last time I checked the reward was over $30,000,000.00. I thought for that much money nobody was safe from betrayal. I was wrong.

377

Not amazing at all. $30M is nothing to people who believe. See that's the thing: all this FBI stuff of wannabe-terrorists is silly because it makes us US-web-readers think the US is on top of all this, and understands etc, and that the terrorists are all incompetent, like the ones the FBI talks up when they arrest (recently).

I just saw a reference to Zazi, when the web article was talking about how easy it is to get Ammonium Nitrate for ANFO bombs, still. (they didn't mention how many millions of tons are produced for farming every year)...and they took pains to point to Zazi as an example of the issue.

But last I heard, Zazi didn't have any ammonium nitrate. So what's the point? The point is: us US are the stupid ones, I think.

you could have $100Million bounty on your head and it wouldn't matter. What is anyone close to Bin Laden going to do with $100 Million? well, probably finance more jihad I guess.

No one would trust the US to pay it anyhow.

Why would you trust an infidel to pay you?

It comes down to whether the strategy of "we kill all our enemies" is workable (or sustainable). You can do an estimate of the annual cost of what it takes to kill all your enemies.

I think it makes more sense to make airplanes illegal. They're unsafe technology.

The problem is: we have to accept the risk. There will always be people with a grudge. At any point in time, there are new, uncontrolled technologies the grudge-holders can master and use against others. It never goes away, always changing.

You need to put the cost of protecting society against the power of these uncontrolled technologies, onto the people who profit from the technologies. Not everyone in a nation. If the technology is unsafe, make it illegal.

It's easier to monitor technology, than it is to "catch" people.

[nigel99 610]

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Then how about geese and ducks, which do show
up on radar?

I think it has to do with density differences between air and target. I have seen birds hundreds of times at distances exceeding 3 miles on 5 KW boat X band radars. Furnuno sells a so called BIRD RADAR (S band) that are used by tuna boats to spot bird flocks at distances of over 20 miles.

I spoke with a bird researcher in Hawaii who was using Furuno radar to track bird movements. He said that he regularly got returns from insect swarms at distances of several miles when the air was calm. He figured it out by observing and corellating close range echos visually with evening insect swarms.

Most people would think a Pelican to be an ideal stealth aircraft, but they have a very big RCS and show up great on simple low power (2-5KW) boat radars.

377

In answer to Georgers question - I think that if investigated you'd find that birds wings are rather "flat". You need to look at the dimensions in terms of a wavelength of the radar in use (higher frequency shorter wavelength). As 377 said density also matters - but I am not quite in my domain as the only real radar work I have done is for GPR.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[kallend 2,145]

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Then how about geese and ducks, which do show
up on radar?

I think it has to do with density differences between air and target. I have seen birds hundreds of times at distances exceeding 3 miles on 5 KW boat X band radars. Furnuno sells a so called BIRD RADAR (S band) that are used by tuna boats to spot bird flocks at distances of over 20 miles.

I spoke with a bird researcher in Hawaii who was using Furuno radar to track bird movements. He said that he regularly got returns from insect swarms at distances of several miles when the air was calm. He figured it out by observing and corellating close range echos visually with evening insect swarms.

Most people would think a Pelican to be an ideal stealth aircraft, but they have a very big RCS and show up great on simple low power (2-5KW) boat radars.

377

In answer to Georgers question - I think that if investigated you'd find that birds wings are rather "flat". You need to look at the dimensions in terms of a wavelength of the radar in use (higher frequency shorter wavelength). As 377 said density also matters - but I am not quite in my domain as the only real radar work I have done is for GPR.

Not density per se, but differences in dielectric constant at the relevant frequency for non-conductors.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[snowmman 3]

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/16s-prepared-shoot-wayward-plane/story?id=8900171

I believe the intent is that US citizens are supposed to feel safer, knowing that we're prepared to shoot down passenger jets whenever they have an unexplained problem.

Sure, the reaction to Ballon Boy emergency is: "rescue".
Reaction to passenger jet emergency: "shoot down".

I need to write the 2009 Nader book "Unsafe At Any Speed".

Except I'll be talking about planes.

[377 22]

Fighter pilots want to engage in successful aerial combat. If they don't prove their value, there will be no pilot seats in future fighters. Congress is starting to question whether you really need a human in the cockpit.

No fighter pilot wants to shoot down an airliner, but a kill is a kill. Not too many Migs to engage these days.

"yeah, two Airbus 320s that wouldn't answer ATC, a dope running Avianca Cargo 767 and a suspicious MD 80. One more and I'm an ace."

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[snowmman 3]

waiting for the signal to deploy Skynet.

I tried to tell them the drones could have shot down the passenger jet, at lower cost and less risk.

Think of how they argued against flying close to Cooper's jet. Hell, I said, it's a drone..we'll fly it anywhere, anytime. Plus if you're going to shoot down the passenger jet, who the hell cares if you crash into it..Drones are cheap guided missiles.

(I didn't tell the jumper I paid $750 to, that I actually also had a subcontract for Skynet, and was trying to stimulate it's activation. We get a $1M bonus for every shootdown a drone gets)

Hell, who's the jumper going to complain to about a contract violation, if he's shot down?

We got the front end, the backend, and the media distribution rights. Except in South Africa. Nobody gets that market!

[JerryThomas 0]

Snowmman you forgot to mention, that he drove away in a volkswagon thing. At 8000 ft above the Gifford Pinchot National Forrest towing a briefcase.Shortly after he exited the aircraft.

[377 22]

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Not density per se, but differences in dielectric constant at the relevant frequency for non-conductors.

Yeah, what the professor said.

They must have taught me that dialectric constant stuff in EE school, but I obviously forgot. Just give me a few minutes with Maxwell's equations and I'll derive it.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[georger 268]

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Then how about geese and ducks, which do show
up on radar?

I think it has to do with density differences between air and target. I have seen birds hundreds of times at distances exceeding 3 miles on 5 KW boat X band radars. Furnuno sells a so called BIRD RADAR (S band) that are used by tuna boats to spot bird flocks at distances of over 20 miles.

I spoke with a bird researcher in Hawaii who was using Furuno radar to track bird movements. He said that he regularly got returns from insect swarms at distances of several miles when the air was calm. He figured it out by observing and corellating close range echos visually with evening insect swarms.

Most people would think a Pelican to be an ideal stealth aircraft, but they have a very big RCS and show up great on simple low power (2-5KW) boat radars.

377

In answer to Georgers question - I think that if investigated you'd find that birds wings are rather "flat". You need to look at the dimensions in terms of a wavelength of the radar in use (higher frequency shorter wavelength). As 377 said density also matters - but I am not quite in my domain as the only real radar work I have done is for GPR.

Not density per se, but differences in dielectric constant at the relevant frequency for non-conductors.

/... Materials can be classified according to their permittivity and conductivity, s (sigma). Materials with a large amount of loss inhibit the propagation of electromagnetic waves. In this case, generally when s/(OE) >> 1, we consider the material to be a good conductor. Dielectrics are associated with lossless or low-loss materials, where s/(OE) << 1. Those that do not fall under either limit are considered to be general media. A perfect dielectric is a material that has no conductivity, thus exhibiting only a displacement current. Therefore it stores and returns electrical energy as if it were an ideal capacitor ... /