SkydiveJack

Isn't the paper on when it comes from the reserve? ...since the #'s were recorded I doubt they put 'em back on. I thought about that. But you don't necessarly need to break the bundles open to read the serial numbers. The paper wraping is around the center and the #'s are to the side of the bills. Anyway, it's just a thought and I was curious if it was confirmed that the Cooper money was handed over wrapped with rubber bands. Ckret?

Hey Ckret Something Safecrack said got my attention. Usually when you get packets of money it has a paper wraping around it. Is it confirmed that these $20 bill packets were wrapped with rubber bands before they were handed over to Cooper?

What Zing said!

What????

RYODER, GURU, SKYDIVE JACK? your opinions? Reading the www.boeing-727.com system info I see that a cockpit warning horn sounds if cabin altitude exceeds 10,000 ft. How could a 727 stay pressurized if the door seals were so ineffective that you could see the outside through the gaps???? Bleed air or airconditioning pack air can keep up with minor leaks and holes, but could it maintain cabin pressure sufficient to keep the warning horn from activating if the 727 were above 10,000 feet with daylight shining through the edges of the doors? Also, aren't the 727 doors "plug" type where you couldn't see directly out through the edges even if the seals were leaky? I am not familiar with the 727 door seals in particular, but in general there is a rubber seal on the door unit itself that extends and overlaps the ajoining frame around the door. There can also be inflatable seals within the door frame that get their pressure from bleed air when the engines are started. I have had door seals leak on Lear Jets and it is very, very loud. From my experience there is no way to see through a gap in an airliner door because there is a metal to metal overlap as well as the rubber seals.

Ahh... Wow... like... I don't think they care man.

I jumped the 727 twice back at Quincy. What they did was to remove the lower half of the stairs. They took off with the remaining upper half up and closed and then lowered them in flight. Don Kirlin could give you more detail because he was the jumpmaster on at least one of my jumps. I believe the upper half is extended hydraulically. When lowered the upper half didn't seem to extend into the airstream too much but it seemed fixed, latched or locked into place. I'm wondering if the lower half of the stairs was hinged in order to flex up a bit as people and fuel are loaded with the full stairs down on the ground. If this is the case then the lower stair half on Coopers plane was hinged and being held up by the wind flow. As the weight of a person or sled went out to the end it would extend down further. When the weight suddenly is gone the lower half would pop back up. I don't recall the 727 exit being bad at all. Sure it was faster and a a bit of a shock at first. But both jumps I dove out and intentionally turned up line of flight to see the 727 before diving down to the base. It was no big deal but really cool!!! Edited for typo

This is big! I am a pilot. Non-pilots would not be expected to know about flight plan filing procedures. Even some licensed pilots forget that you can file in the air. Of course we are talking about an IFR (instrument flight rules) flight plan that has to be filed by every FAA Part 121 airliner, even if VFR (visual flight rules) conditions exist along the entire route of flight. A private aircraft can take off in VFR conditions and file an IFR in the air. But a pilot would know that in an emergency like a hijacking, ATC (air traffic control) would be able to route that aircraft right away. Another interesting point. Victor Airways (as in V-23) are lower altitude airways although they often have IFR or Jet Airways superimposed on top of them at a higher altitude, usually starting above 17999 ft, MSL (above sea level). Now a Victor airway has a MSA, minimum safe altitude, that provides you with adequate ground clearance from obstacles like antennas and mountains. In the copy of the teletype that Ckret posted, Northwest Flights Operations told the crew that- “No terrain exceeds 8 thousand on that route of flight”. They then advise of a slightly higher altitude needed after Red Bluff VOR. Now Cooper told the crew to fly at 10,000 ft. If he was a pilot he would know that this altitude would require the crew to fly V-23 because the mountains and volcanoes to the east of this line would be above this altitude. I don’t actually have the Low Enroute Chart for this area handy but I’ve flown between Seattle and Portland a few times. I could see the mountains to the east. From memory I remember flying in to Seattle from the southeast and having to stay at 14,000 ft until I cleared the mountain range. So an altitude of 10,000 ft would automatically require the plane to take this or some other coastal route. Now some people here have commented about it being cloudy and not being able to see the ground or the cities. Well at night, with clouds below you, you can se the glow of city lights. If you are familiar with an area you can tell almost exactly where you are. I flew out of Willow Run Airport in Michigan for years. Flying home along certain routes, when I got within 100 miles or less I could usually tell exactly where I was just by the glow of city lights from beneath low clouds. Heck, on a clear night at 41,000 ft I could see St. Louis and Chicago at the same time when I was between them. So it’s quite possible for a pilot familiar with the Seattle/Portland area to tell where he was at night with clouds below him. In conclusion- 1. Only a pilot would normally know about filing a flight plan in the air. 2. By telling the crew to fly at 10,000 ft you could reasonably expect to fly along V23 without overtly stating what route you wanted to be on. 3. For someone familiar with flying at night in that area it would be fairly easy to tell where you are in relation to Vancouver and Portland, even with low clouds and even by looking out the side windows. 4. If I recall correctly, Cooper bought his ticket in Portland shortly before the flight to Seattle so he could have had some idea what the weather would be along that route later in the day and evening. 5. 10,000 ft is the normal maxium altitude for an airline flight crew operating under FAA Part 121 to be unpressurised and off oxygen (as in not wearing an oxygen mask, like Cooper in the back). Interesting!

Sorry, I screwed up. I meant to post it in Bonfire. Duh!

N/A

Muff Dive Hey Asshole

Is that a guess, or a question for me? HW Yes

Howard?

Flight Data Recorders back then did not record navigation data. They only recorded somewhere between 6 to 9 parameters. Things like altitude, airspeed, thrust, maybe flap and gear position. I don't remember all of them but I do know that cabin pressure was not a parameter. Therefore there is no navigation/flight path recorded from the actual airplane. (BTW, there would be no record of the pressure bump and it's time other than the pilots.) Back in 1971 the recorders used a big spool of tape and it had to be replaced when it was full. The cockpit voice recorder is a separate system that recorded only a 30 minute loop then re-recorded over itself. So there would be no record of the pilots conversation except the last 30 minutes into Reno. You are correct that there was no GPS back in that day, then mention "the WAAS beacons that existed". I'm not sure what you mean by this but the WAAS system I am familiar with is only just starting to be put in place. The beacons that existed back then (VOR's) worked well but were nowhere near as accurate as GPS is today. The only record of the flight path would be from ground based radar. I hope the FBI saved the tape records of this, not just the diagrams that were drawn up at the time!

At least she has the class not to play for OSU!

That looks good enough to eat! BTW, nice cake.

Ok, I'll try. Since we don't have any exact figures to start with I will use some estimates. Let's use a rate of descent on his canopy of 1000 ft. per minute. It would probably be a couple hundred more fpm but 1000 fpm is easier to start with. Now he jumped at 10,000 ft. but we don't know what altitude he opened. But we are going to use 10,000 ft. for this estimate. Please don't start arguing about how he would be below that altitude by the time he got open or that the parachute would have blown up at that exit speed. Now the field elevation is important here. The Vancouver airport is 25 ft. above sea level and an approach chart shows a few hills towards the hot zone at around 500 ft. So lets just call it 10,000 ft. that Cooper was under canopy for now. So we come up with 10 minutes in the air under canopy. With an average wind of 30 mph. and no forward speed from the parachute he would be blown 5 miles. If the winds were 45 mph he would be blown 7.5 miles. Let's say the round parachute was modified and had a speed of 5 mph and Cooper ran with the wind the whole way down. In a 30 mph wind he would be blown 5.83 miles. In a 45 mph wind he would be blown 8.33 miles. Now we know he really didn't have 10,000 ft under canopy so the time is less and the distance over the ground is less. 8 minutes under canopy with 45 mph winds and running with the wind on a 5 mph canopy would shorten the distance to 6.66 miles over the ground. With 10 minutes air time and no forward air speed from the canopy the winds would have to average 90 mph for him to move 15 miles over the ground. And we haven't even addressed the direction of the wind.

It wasn't a real ejection seat. I saw Joe and his crew in Spaceland when they first started filming. He was doing a sceen for the movie 'The Right Stuff'. It was a sceen where Chuck Yeager had to eject from an F-104 during a high altitude test flight. During the actual ejection Yeager's helmet somehow hit the bottom of the seat, broke the face shield and got rocket propellant residue on his face, burning him. Joe had a silver jumpsuit made to look like a space suit and a space helmet that actually connected to a metal ring around the top of the suit, just like an early Mercury astronaut. He had a black fiberglass "ejection seat" that he would exit with, holding two handles on each side and releasing it for the next part of the shot. The seat had an AAD and a small parachute. The thing that apparently got Joe was the small smoke canister attached to the helmet. It was there to simulate smoke trailing in freefall from Yeager's burning helmet after smashing into the rocket motor on the actual ejection seat. I saw Joe landing once with the smoke still burning and he was coughing and choking under canopy. He could hardly see to land and his film crew had trouble getting the helmet off his head. Well after a few days filming in Spaceland they relocated out west to (I think) Utah. They needed more cloud cover for the background of the shot, or something like that. The next day or so Joe just went in with a no pull. I think the conclusion was that during freefall the smoke got into the helmet and incapacitated him. He wasn't jumping an AAD. B.J. Worth ended up doing the jumps for the movie. In the credits at the end they say something like 'In Memory of Joe Svec'. The whole thing was a real shame. He was a great guy.

.......blah blah blah blah BUT, as I said, the point of my particular post was not to "hijack" this thread, so I'll only refer you over to those links and the investigative reporting and the books and the videos and the information -- in order for you to do more research on your own. blah blah blah blah............ Quote Ok then. Go hijack an airplane, not this thread. May I suggest Speakers Corner. Thank you.

As a pilot, I am sure that the crew reported their airspeed, not ground speed. I am looking to find the winds from the ground to 10,000 ft. that night in order to get an idea of the drift under canopy, assuming it was opened. Of course the distance of the drift (i.e. speed and direction) of the parachute over the ground will depend on the altitude that he opened.

Does someone know where to pull up the winds, especially aviation forcast and reported upper winds, for the date and general time of the jump?

Here's a good point. Quite often the press gets it wrong. But we naturally have a tendency to take what they say as fact. Dan Cooper turning into D.B Cooper from day one is a perfect example. As the press repeats it's errors the truth goes away. I think we should listen carefully to what Ckret says and get away from countering his facts from the files with our probable misconceptions from the press. We seem to keep muddying the waters here.

Would this be the Herd launching one of their Worlds Fastest 10 Man's from a Skyvan?

Hi jon, No I'm not familiar with a B-17 named "Heavenly Body". Are you sure it flew off an aircraft carrier? I never heard about this with a B-17. For one thing, the Doolittle Raiders used B-25. Do you know what carrier was used for the B-17? Sorry, but I think you might be mixed up about some different stories. Can you dig up a link about this? I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Thanks!

Thanks for the photo. My wife used to be part owner and fly it. I like to tell people my wife had a 450 horsepower beaver.