jose9878

-Shortly after 3:00pm while waiting to take-off from Portland the note was passed to the stewardess. -The flight from Portland to Seattle is a short 30 minute hop – arrival should have been shortly after 3:30pm. We know the Portland departure was shortly after 3:00pm. What was the scheduled take-off time from Portland? I apologize if this has been posted. -Cooper wanted everything by 5:00pm. He knew it was a short 20 minutes from McCord to Tacoma. True statement but I don’t think that his plan was to jump at 8:11pm. Pitch-black night, there was a half moon out. In the rain, it was scattered showers. 200 mile an hour wind in his face, it was 170+ mph with flaps & wheels down. Wearing loafers, ok...most likely but not certain. What do you think of an experienced parachutists jumping at dusk/sunset. This would make it difficult for anyone on the ground to see the parachute, especially if the jump was planned to occur shortly after take-off, sometime between 4:00pm – 5:00pm. What was the weather like between 3:30 – 5:00pm? After all, he did give the note to the stewardess before the flight took off from Portland, add it up…..30 minute flight, 1 hour for the money/chutes to arrive & you have a Seattle take off time of roughly 4:30pm – bingo – daylight/dusk/sunset. Had the money & equipment arrived within an hour of the scheduled landing in Seattle the jump may have been made shortly before or at dusk/sunset. As it turns out I don’t think the weather hampered his plan, it probably assisted his plan when his plan changed. For example, the chase planes didn’t see him jump & the search was post-poned due to the weather. Concluding that he was not an experienced jumper because of the weather conditions & time of the jump just doesn’t add up to me. Regarding the reserve - there is always the possibility that he knew the reserve was a training reserve. He may not have planned on using it. How many skydivers plan on using their reserve on every jump? How many BASE jumpers carry a reserve? Take the dummy reserve with you & throw off those searching for you, if that's the case - it worked. After all no experienced skydiver would jump with a dummy reserve. Wait a minute, wasn’t there a guy who recently jumped with no chute? He did land under one, did he have a reserve? And what about the Mr. Bill that landed? No reserve needed. Regarding the shoes (this may be far-fetched but why not) – Is it a known fact that Cooper was not on the previous flight? There would have been no reason for the flight attendants to take notice, especially if he was not wearing sunglasses on that flight. He could have stored boots & other equipment on the plane, disembarked, purchased a new ticket & re-board….he was second to last to board. How long was the airplane on the ground at Portland? Was there enough time for this scenario? My point is there was a point-of-no-return. I believe this was when he handed the stewardess the note. Beyond this time which was shortly after 3:00pm he was committed to jumping regardless of time of day, weather, delays or anything else that came up (calling his bluff). After the note was passed it was either jump & live happily ever after, jail, death or any combination. I just can't see a non-skydiver attempting this. Many tandem passengers freeze at the door or refuse to jump. Ckret - take a trip to Kapowsin or Snohimish & try a tandem. After your jump let us know if a whuffo would jump from "a perfectly good airplane". Regarding the pressure bumps - I didn't realize the aircraft equipment picked up the pressure bumps. With this info I would agree that more than likely that's were he jumped.

Sure it's a big area, he could have jumped anywhere from Seattle to Reno (in his mind Seattle to Mexico City). Isn't that what you would want? Throws off those searching for you. Big DZ, little DB. Who's to say he didn't plan on jumping in Oregon, Nevada or Arizona? Draw a line from Seattle to Mexico City & look at the possibilities. The fact is nobody really knows where he jumped, it's assumed he jumped where the pressure bumps were registered. Your statement above also assumes he had an accomplice, that he had a DZ planned & that he jumped north/south of Lake Merwin. I'm not assuming anything. Also, I keep reading about difficult tree landings in heavily wooded areas near Lake Merwin...do a quick google earth search south of Lake Merwin & you will see that there are plenty of fields to land in, next to plenty of roads (of course, here I'm assuming that the area looks similar now to what it did in '71). The fact is this guy outsmarted the law & got away with $200,000. Has anyone tried to re-create the jump, no sled, real jumpers? I'm sure there are plenty of skydivers who would jump on the chance. Hire a 727, outfit jumpers with a dummy load, take off from Seattle & see if the stairs really do create a pressure bump. Will the pilots notice the jumpers leaving the aircraft? I don't recall the stairs slamming back up & hitting the tail when I jumped the 727 at the WFFC (of course they could have jimmy rigged them to stay down). I don't recall any pressure bumps & I was in the cabin. The pilots were in the cockpit with the door shut. Pressure bumps??? Seems to me there's lots of assumptions in this case. The guy died on the jump. The money rolled down stream. He jumped where the pilots felt the pressure bumps...it goes on & on.

Jump pilots are required to wear & know how to use bail out rigs as well....I wore one when flying right seat in a porter (I believe it was an NB6, resembles one but I can't be sure) & jump pilots are familiar with jump operations. Were any Pacific Northwest & Canadian jump pilots suspects?

All I am saying is that I don't believe it was a blind jump. I mentioned nothing about a specific pre-determined exit point/rendezvous point. I also don't believe he meant to make a night jump in the freezing rain. What was the weather like between 3:00pm - 5:00pm? Did the airline attendant not sit next to him for 5 hours? Did he not make a comment stating that it shouldn't be taking this long? His timeline was thrown off because they couldn't get the money & equipment on his timeline. When his timeline changed he adapted to it & went with it....he didn't really have a choice.

I don't think it would have necessarily been a "blind" jump. There was a partial moon that evening. Was it solid cloud cover at 5,000 feet across the Pacific Northwest? Even if it was solid, local jumpers could easily identify; Mt. Rainier 14,411ft, Mt Adams 12,271ft, Mt Baker 10,781ft, Glacier Peak 10,541ft, Mt. Stuart 9,127ft, Mt St. Helens 9,360ish ft (pre-1980) & Mt. Olympus 7,965ft. If the cloud cover was not solid at 5000 feet the Columbia River may have been visible & even with solid cloud cover the Portland city lights could have been visible through the clouds. Just a random thought. Plan A - get out shortly after takeoff. Plan B - get out between Mt. St. Helens & Portland city light. Plan C - get out after Portland city lights....etc.

I wouldn't completely rule out Rackstraw. Robert W. Rackstraw was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Also, a helicopter pilot, Robert W. Rackstraw was in flight class 69-11, his tour dates were 69-70, he was in RVN Unit 11 GS 1 CAV (Pathfinders) & his call sign was Airborne Bob. He would have been out of the military in 1971 & would have been familiar with flight/airborne operations and wilderness survival. May not be the same Rackstraw but I still wouldn't completely rule him out.

Speculation - One method of tying the money to himself. Much slower exit and the tie job holds. Question for Ckret - How much suspension line was missing from the reserve parachute left on the plane? Is the missing amount enough to tie the bag to himself as shown in the picture?

Make 100 jumps, fill out the USAPT application & send it in. The guidelines were the same yet I remember a guy with 89 jumps at tryouts, one with over 2500 and another had only made 2 jumps the previous 9 months prior to tryouts (slotperfect was there). Have a good attitude, be a teamplayer & show that you are willing to learn - they will train you to be a better skydiver. Oh ya....change the avatar. (The guy with 89 jumps made the team.....the one with 2500 didn't.)

Blue Skies Joe! Your silly songs were fun. The jumps even better! The plane ride to 7 grand just won't be the same. BSBD, Your Frayed Knights Brethren!

Blue Angels - Various Shows - Part 3.

Blue Angels - Various Shows - Part2.

Blue Angels - Various Shows.

When I was a kid we sneaked into this site several times. The blast doors are opened about a foot and a half, enough to squeeze through. This site has steel stairs leading from the blast doors in. A hole was knocked out of the top of the dome to remove the generators. It's pretty cool looking up at the stars from inside the dome. Much of the steel was also removed making it easy to fall if your not paying attention when walking around above or below ground. I wouldn't recommend walking around at night without lights....there's huge drop offs in several places. Many of the local Kids (Moses Lake, Warden, Othello, Lind, Ritzville, Odessa) snuck in there when it was government property. It's full of old beer cans & graffiti. There's another site 3 miles south of Warden just past the cemetary. When building the sites they had problems at some with water seaping in. The Warden site is full of water & the blast doors are either fully closed or fully opened making it hard to get in unless you have rappelling equipment. Theres a third site outside of Royal City but I don't know much about that site. The Titan II missiles that went in the sites were obsolete before they even finished building the sites.

Keith's Apache was shot down in Iraq. Everyone who knew Keith knows he died doing what he loved. Among many other things he was a skydiver, aviator, husband & father. He was the inspiration that kept me going to the DZ every weekend & the one who took me flying until I too earned my own pilots license. I am extremely saddened by his loss, the world has lost another great aviator. Condolences to his wife Kelly, the girls, twin brother Kevin & family. I have Kelly & Kevin's contact info if anyone needs it...pm me. http://www.paratrooper.net/commo/Topic238723-9-1.aspx Blue Skies brother! Fly free!

Any of you still around? Kevin, Craig, Sharon, Joe??? If so, please PM me. -Gracias.

And I was being so careful to leave names out to protect the innocent. How you doing John? Long time no see! Jose

We had a similar incident out of a PC-6 Porter about a decade ago only the jumper didn't forget to unbuckle his seatbelt. At the time we re-buckled them after taking them off so that they didn't hang outside the door banging the aircraft after exit. One of the jumpers didn't notice that he stepped through a seatbelt prior to exit. I was flying right seat, the pilot noticed a shoe at the corner of the door & asked me to check it out. I noticed a leg still attached to the shoe & immediatly squeezed my way between my seat & the pilots seat while wearing an old military emergency rig & military pilot helmet - it's a tight sqeeze. I made eye contact with the jumper, he signaled me to cut him away by giving me the scuba diving out of oxygen signal & "mouthing cut me away". I simply unbuckled the seatbelt & he fell away looking up at me & giving me a thumbs up. He landed in the pea gravel pit with a broken ankle & deep cuts from the seatbelt. After this incident we strapped a military helmet bag to the floor & all seatbelts went in it prior to exit. To my knowledge we have not had a problem since then.

Off the top of my head without going through my logbooks; HELICOPTERS UH1H Huey UH60 Blackhawk CH54 SkyCrane CH47 Chinook Bell something or another SINGLE ENGINE Cessna 182 Cessna 180 Cessna 206 Cessna 210 Porter Beaver Stearman Tigermoth Trike Caravan MULTI-ENGINE F-27 Fokker Friendship C130 Hercules West Wind Twin Beech Queen Air King Air Super Otter Casa DC3 B17 flying fortress - The Fuddy Duddy B25 Liberator PBY Catalina Gruman G21A Goose Lockheed Constellation JETS C141 Starlifter C5 Galaxy Boeing 727 ??? the one at the 1995-96 WFFC Ilyushin l-76TD - Soviet Heavy Transport NO ENGINE Balloon - The Bird of Paradise Burners Balloon

Rock on! Glad it worked. He'll give you a hard time for being a skydiver & you'll hear the ole "there's only two things that fall out of they sky" comment but he's great at what he does. My arm was broke in 3 pieces...there was the part attached to the shoulder, the part attached to the elbow & a seperate floating part. Let me know if he puts you in a hanging cast & you can have mine, although your insurance should cover it...they run about $650.00. -Jose

Call Ann at (415) 563-2600, She'll hook you up. I let her know that you might be calling. Dr. Akazuki is part of the PPO & HMO network. I only paid the $20 co-pays per visit. The best thing to do is call & setup an appointment since he's fairly busy...it may be 2 weeks before you can get in to see him. I just made a follow-up appointment & the earliest I could get in is next Tuesday. I broke it on January 29th, was in a hanging cast for about 2 months & started physical therapy as soon as I could move my arm. I was out of the cast shortly after 2 months. He said I recovered faster than normal. I never really had any pain due to an abundance of percocet. He recommended that I take as much as needed instead of feeling any pain. The worst part is you lose your muscle tissue & it takes a while for your strength to come back. I'm still working on it. I want to go jump but I can barely lift 10 pounds, I don't know if I could pull off a left hand turn or a proper flare at this point. The 3000 California location is at the corner of California & Baker, 3rd floor.

Hey KP, I shattered my arm (the left humerous) hang gliding in January & went to Dr. Akazuki in SF. He did a great job getting it together again - without surgery. He has two locations; 3000 California St. (415) 563-2600 or 24 Willie Mays Plaza (415) 972-2249. He works on the SF Giants at the second address. You may want to call the first number. Also, I have slings, crutches, a hanging cast & leftover percocet if you need any of these things. Good Luck, Jose

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Great dropzone with a small club atmosphere. The caravan is in great shape & climbs fast. Large indoor packing area, friendly manifest & big blue skies. I didn’t have a problem with the landing area since the indoor packing area is carpeted. The people are fantastic & willing to jump with you even if you are the newest/guest jumper on the dropzone. Farmer McNasty gives the DZ character. No attitude here just lots of fun people with big smiles! If you are visiting or moving to Eastern Washington this is the place to jump.

AAA - The California State Automobile Association IT division is moving to Glendale, AZ this summer. We have roughly 200 jobs available. I'm working directly with the hiring manager for these positions....if interested send me your resume & I'll make sure it gets into the hands of the appropriate hiring manager.....positions available range from IT Directors, System Admins, IT Analysts & Project Managers to Administrative staff. www.ci.glendale.az.us click on jobs w/Glendale then AAA

Here's the hang gliding & paragliding form letter. Just substitute BASE for hang gliding & paragliding or better yet, help out your hang gliding brothers by sending 2 seperate letters...one for BASE & one for Hang gliding/Paragliding. I'm sending the BASE one now. Dear Mr. Fagan: In response to the proposed 2006 NPS Management Policies, hang gliding and paragliding are fully in keeping with the NPS's goals and efforts for conserving park resources and values. These recreational activities have historically had no more - and often less - adverse impact than most traditionally-accepted activities like backpacking and hiking. National parks are often the best or only terrain suitable for footlaunch powerless flight. Yet hang gliding and paragliding are prohibited unless a superintendent obtains a Special Use Regulation through a cumbersome process that often takes years and extensive park resources. This is a burden to the NPS, park managers, and the powerless flying community. I urge the NPS to adopt a friendlier policy that does not require a Special Use Regulation before this low adverse impact form of recreation is allowed in a park. Powerless flight should be determined by the park manager and the hang gliding and paragliding community. Sincerely, Your Name & Address