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Quade wrote: Good points about DME being impractical Quade, but there are all sorts of tricks one can use with a cheap 1971 vintage handheld VHF receiver to get estimates of distance and direction to known stations. Hams use body fade techniques (interposing your body as a shield for attenuating when between the receiver antenna and the direction to the transmitting station). You can get crude direction info from body fade without a directional antenna. Range can be estimated by reducing telescoping antenna length and seeing at what point the received signal fades out. I want Cooper to have used radios because it adds a tech twist to the mystery, but there is zero evidence that he did. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Farflung wrote: Farflung is too modest about his "qualifications". If bigger is better he wins, having flown planes with nearly three times the number of jet engines as a 727 has. When I was a kid I longed to be a commercial pilot. I had it all planned out. I was also fascinated by radio and at age 11 converted an old AM FM vacuum tube radio to receive the aero VHF band by unwinding some turns off an oscillator coil and making a few other minor changes. The hacked up radio performance was suboptimal, but I could hear all the local airliners and a few VORTAC stations. As I recall, in addition to Morse IDs they VORTACS had a voice ID too. I remember "WOODSIDE VORTAC" being announced endlessly on a recorded loop. I loved listening to the airliners. It was 99.9% routine, but once I heard an emergency declared by an inbound Pan Am plane that had an engine fire warning. I rushed outside and waited. We lived right under an approach to SFO. Soon a big Pan Am Stratocruiser passed overhead with one prop feathered and trailing smoke from the shut down engine. Im my 11 year old mind I was in the left seat of the Strat, masterfully saving the day, soon to be congratulated by grateful stewardesses and passengers. Fortunately, before I made any real commitments to an aviation career, I met a real pilot. He had flown P 47s win WW2 and went to work for the airlines after the war. He said airline flying was really boring and that the life wasn't good for raising a family. Tales of jet lag, hassles with senority and route choices, endless paperwork and long stretches of autpilot boredom dampened my enthsusiasm. I chose electrical engineering and it worked out fine. I got my "sky fix" cheap by skydiving starting at age 18 and still jumping today at 61. I remain optimistic that Cooper will be ID'd. All it takes is a lucky break, like in the UNABOMBER case. We aren't likely to solve it at our keyboards, but we have unearthed some very interesting stuff, like the Air America 727 jumps, USFS smoke jumper SE Asia CIA links, Tena Bar area dredging history and analysis etc. If Cooper escaped, I still wonder how he did it without an accomplice. By morning the news was widespread and anybody who looked out of place walking in the rural areas under the flight path would be a suspect. The Tena Bar money suggests that something went wrong. People dont throw cash away. What would Occam conclude about the money find? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I wonder why the Sentinel MK 2000 wasnt more highly regarded? I thought it was a pretty good design. I guess without a microcontroller and software, you can't deal with all the pressure transients presented in freeflying, tumbling, swooping etc. The MK 2000 was dirt simple, 2 AA cells, an altitude switch and a rate switch in series to fire a pin puller if both switches closed. If you were low and descending fast, it fired. No software, not one "bit". The MK 2000 saved a lot of lives, but I've read stories about misfires in freefall. I've not read about any failures to fire, but as with all AADs they dont work perfectly 100% of the time. When I was a static line student in 1968 (Livermore CA, Cal Club DZ) they used the original Sentinels which you had to arm in the plane above the fire altitude and disarm under canopy above the fire altitude as I recall. MANY students forgot to disarm them after opening resulting in an expensive refit of the explosive driven pin puller cartridge and a reserve repack. I was a college student and dint have the bucks to pay for that so I was very careful about disarming. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

You know it was funny that the con men who swindled Newsweek KNEW that Cooper couldnt just figure out his position by elapsed time so they came up with that preposterous planted ground transmitter triangle story. They KNEW there would be questions about Cooper's navigation and they came up with a tale they thought was credible. I agree with Quade, elapsed time position fixing on a prior flight would be useless on the hijacked flight. Remember FO Ratazack wanted to deviate from the planned course and trick Cooper into jumping into the frigid Pacifc Ocean. No guarantee that the pilots would be following any particular path. It was an adversarial life and death situation. You couldn't take anything for granted. Still, several copycats managed to land alive without precise location info for their exit. McCoy did pretty well in fact. When I was a student, I stupidly obeyed a jumpmaster's command to jump into a solid cloud cover. I turned out OK, I landed on a farm miles from the DZ. You can get lucky on a blind exit, but the risks are high. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Yes. The alien loggers have been recorded on several Skunk cams. It's on YouTube. Barry Goldwater was an active ham radio operator. So are a lot of people who post here. This proves that exposure to intense radio fields causes chronic mental dysfunction, far exceeding the minor abberations attendant to cell phone usage. What's the frequency Kenneth? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Has "profiling" ever been subject to rigorous testing and validation? Sounds pretty subjective. Easy to do post mortems and point to all the hits and ignore the misses. Remember when mediums and psychics were consulted to help solve kidnappings and disappearances? Am I the only sceptic here? I shudder to think of search warrants being issued on the basis of profiling. Shop around enough and I'm sure you could find a profiler who would say the house you wanted to search is exactly the one likely to be contain what you are looking for. If you are going to invade a home you should have some objective evidence that justifies the warrant. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Farflung wrote: I was studying engineering at UC Berkeley when Kaczynski was an asst. math prof there. I didnt know him but he had a reputation as "weird" among my friends who were math majors. Now consider how far off normal you have to be to be considered weird at Berkeley in the late 60s. In the early 80s he sent a bomb to a favorite EE professor, "Dodge" Angelakos causing serious but not fatal injury. We were all speculating about who the Unabomber was, figuring he had to have a UC Berkeley connection, but nobody thought of Kaczynski. We didn't think math majors knew how to build stuff. We were betting on a physics guy. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Blevins wrote: The Fifth Amendment is a powerful right, but juries do, of course, wonder about why defendants decide to invoke it. After the final arguments are made, the judge instructs the jury and they are told to make no adverse inferences from the defendant's refusal to testify. Most of the time I think they follow the instruction, but words from judges can't completely nullify natural human suspicion that silence=guilt. I think KC was up to something fishy, too much money for a guy who had a low paying job, but I just don't see a direct link to Norjack. Could he have embezzled much money as a purser? I doubt it, but I did date a stewardess while I was in school. Her roommate, also a stew, had literally over a thousand of those tiny liquor bottles. Little thefts can add up to big ones. As an aside, some airlines did deal in a lot of cash. A good friend, now deceased, flew for Trans Ocean Airlines. They bought a bunch of used Boeing Stratocruisers and tried to take on the big boys in trans Pacific routes. They foundered as jets came on the scene and one of the big airlines threatened to cancel their orders if Boeing sold any 707s to Trans Ocean. With credit shaky, the Trans Ocean crews had to carry big bags of cash to pay for avgas and catering at every refueling stop. There was a big opportunity for shaving a few hundred here and there if you were crooked and had cooperation from a vendor. If I were an NWA crew member, as KC was, I'd never pick an NWA plane to hijack, it just ups the risk of recognition hugely with no offsetting reward. The grudge motive can be argued, but the hijack didnt really hurt NWA very much. They had insurance. Passengers didnt shun the airline after the hijack. KC could have done a lot more damage as a rogue mechanic. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

http://gothamist.com/2010/12/03/video_rc_plane_flies_over_the_city.php Search the Washougal with this. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Thanks Sandy for a very moving post about 007's life, last days and exit over the DZ that always has blue skies. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Blevins wrote: He wouldn't have to explain anything at all. In fact, I'd advise him not to testify. He could remain silent and the jury will be instructed by the judge to make no adverse inferences from his silence. Unless they found some hot twenties in his possession there is zero evidence directly tieing KC to the hijacked 727. You might be able to work up a pretty good tax evasion case against him, but not skyjacking. Conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt and a unanimous jury verdict. I don't see how you'd ever get that in a prosecution of KC based on the evidence you have uncovered so far. I'd bring a pre trial motion to dismiss based on the FBIs failure to preserve possibly exculpatory evidence, the Raleigh butts that had samples of Coopers DNA. I'll bet it would be granted unless there was some highly probative evidence that put KC on the plane. Remember that today, accomplices are probably home free under the expired statute of limitations. If the trial were held after the statute had run, KC could be the guy on the ground. Unless the FBI could put him in the plane he'd walk. Robert, does your legal advisor concur? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Perfectly good airplanes? Surely you jest. Here's a local one I've made a few jumps from: http://avstop.com/news_october_2010/faa_fines_the_parachute_center_for_aircraft_maintenance_failures.htm 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I too am surprised that the Night Clerk would travel all the way to the US for surgery. I sure wouldn't if I lived in China. They have some excellent surgeons there, you just have to know who they are. The top end of Chinese medicine is very good. They have the very best stuff, latest MRI machines, latest surgical robots etc. Many of the top surgeons are in the military, but they operate on civilians in the major hospitals such as those in Beijing. You may be operated on by a high ranking General in the People's Army, really. Top end US style medicine in China isnt cheap, but it's less expensive than the US by quite a bit. I thought the Night Clerk did all his FBI contacts by phone. I didnt know that he walked into the local office in Seattle. Sheridan Peterson spent a lot of time in China and even made some jumps there. Pete is the oldest skydiver in the history of Chinese parachuting. He was there for the Tiananmen Square protest too. Pete does get around. I think Pete still reads this forum, but he wont post. I just want to know if he heard about the Air America 727 jumps when he was in Nam. I'd guess that the info was quickly spread in the close knit SE Asia jumper community. Someone had to get the spark of an idea for a skydive hijack. It was triggered by something. I never thought of it and neither did any jumpers I have talked to. Cooper's idea was innovative and not at all obvious. His crime surprised thousands of "know it all" jumpers. They hadn't thought of this one before Cooper did. The most innovative stuff jumpers came up with back then was jumping into nudist colonies and brothels, the latter with really bad results: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.lazygranch.com/images/misc/angels1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.lazygranch.com/n6065v.htm&usg=__NQGRP1v4xBzKo5l0kRgw-Xzzobk=&h=396&w=800&sz=70&hl=en&start=4&sig2=ZhB6CY4d_Ci6r9q9I8MgFQ&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=rGpNq767DjNQSM:&tbnh=71&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfrans%2Bbrothel%2Bcrash%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7GGLL_en%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=9wH4TInzIIKg8QP8p9n4Cg http://www.jamesnave.com/?p=513 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I was kinda hoping someone like Amazon would jump in. That would solve the 'ice road morons" problem. Is it even possible? I'll have to check it out on Google Earth. Farflung, I think Mr Paul needs to be interviewed to see if he did any hair work on a Mr Collins in Nov of 71. Jo, what ever happened to your Night Clerk? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Weather? Amazon, this is not what I expect to hear from a survival intructor. So the weather dog ate your homework? What REALLY kept you from coming? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Sluggo said: My apologies Sluggo. It was you who found the account of the Herc outperforming front line F 106 interceptors and the SAGE system in finding and tailing the NWA 727. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Jo wrote: Nahh, 99 doesnt regret it one bit. Id bet on it. The Herc intercept story is on some website documenting the history of McChord AFB and mentions its role in the DB Cooper event. As I recall it was after the F 106s were recalled and the 727 was getting out of the area. I think Snow found it, a safe bet. Man I wish he was back here. We stagnate without fresh stuff and he brought in fresh stuff all the time. If getting on with your life requires the FBI to help you investigate Duane Weber's past you will never get on with your life Jo. Accept it. Make your choice. What makes you think Duane had any special communication skills? People with double digit IQs ruled the CB airwaves in the 60s. World's Biggest Jock carrier is indeed an odd handle. I havent yet figured out that side of Duane's multifaceted personality. Find some Airborne vets association. Use search tools like Google. Dogpile.com is a useful one too. Correspond with some old paratroopers. You can probably find guys still alive who were training at Ft Benning during the time in question. Maybe they can help you. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

If only Fleming had been a radio hobbyist he would have seen through the hoax before handing over the money for the story. The fake Cooper's story about carrying a radio receiver and having previously set up a wide triangle of three radio transmitters as a "target to hit in his parachute" is laughably absurd in my opinion. According to the story it worked: he jumped when he heard the signals and landed near enough to his car to just drive away. If only radiolocation were that easy. Two way radios would have worked if he had an accomplice. I've shown that communications of over 50 miles are easily made from an open parachute at 10,000 ft using a cheap walkie talkie. You can get 20 miles ground to ground if the accomplice or Cooper was on elevated terrain with a line of sight to the other person. The SOG jumpers in Nam used beacons and DF receivers to find each other after landing. I am still trying to find examples of the gear they used. I like radios and I like parachutes, but I guess you can see that. I wish Cooper had used radios, it would make the case more interesting, but there is zero evidence that he did. He was an idiot not have carried an VHF AM receiver so that he could monitor comms between the cockpit crew and the FBI while on the ground. Radio Shack sold an analog tunable "VHF AM receiver in the 60s and 70s that sold for $21 and would have done the job quite well. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Jo, There is a lot of airliner air traffic around any metro area. How could these witnesses tell the difference between a DC 8, 727, 737, 707 or other pasenger or cargo jet just by sound? The may have heard a loud jet. Anything else is speculation in my opinion. Don't bet on the F 106s always being above the 727 if they were trying to intercept it. It is MUCH MUCH MUCH easier to aquire an airborne taget on fighter radar looking up towards it from behind and below. In a "look up" radar scenario there are no ground clutter reflections to deal with. "Look down" fighter radar is still being tweaked today and takes a lot of signal processing to remove ground clutter. I worked a the company that made the F 106's intercept electronics (MA1 fire control system). It had lots of problems and was always getting modified/upgraded. It must have really been an embarassment to the McChord fighter jocks and SAGE operators that the only USAF plane to intercept the NWA 727 was a lumbering C 130 turboprop driven Hercules cargo transport that had no intercept electronics at all. I wonder if the Herc crew painted a 727 under the cockpit window? If Duane took the place of a legit paratrooper trainee then there was a deserter somewhere and those cases were pursued with vigor during wartime. You might have more luck pursuing this angle than trying to find out if someone was busted for posing as an enlistee. I think its a wild goose chase, but some pepole like goose. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Welcome Dwayne. You'll love skydiving. Great thrills and it's pretty cheap once you own your gear. My advice is to jump conservatively, reasonble wing loadings (no tiny canopies), airliner style landings, stay on the ground when the conditions are marginal. Don't try to emulate Jeb Corliss, Luigi Cani or any of those superstars, even when you have a few hundred jumps under your belt. Watch them on Youtube instead. That's what I do. Orthopedic surgeons and funeral directors love extreme hook turn landings. Don't bet your life on perfect timing. As you get older your chances of cheating the Reaper diminish. Plain vanilla skydiving should generate enough adrenaline to keep you happy, especially at age 40. Resist the temptation to keep upping the ante. I am 61 and have been jumping since 1968. Never been hurt, not even slightly. I love this sport and try to manage risk rationally so that I can stay in it for another decade or two. So far, so good. Keep us posted on your progress. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

You are right Orange, it was dirty rotten theft and really extreme intimidation (the bomb). I don't think he was entitled to keep the money, I just wanted the incredibly innovative plan to succeed in getting the money to the ground and still attached to Cooper. After that they could have arested him, I wouldn't have shed any tears. The copy cat skyjacks are not quite as impressive. They had a model. Cooper's idea was wildly innovative and it worked for some, at least for a while before they were caught. Maybe it worked for Cooper too. Time will tell. They are now flying 3 year old kids in our local tunnel (with instructors of course). Some of them fly incredibly well. Safe was showing a lot of promise, wonder if he will tajke the next step? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Jo, The CIA has done some wacky far out stuff (MK Ultra, remote viewing experiments etc) ) but I cant for the world see why they would have been involved in Norjack. It has all the earmarks of a real crime and none of a covert govt operation. Forget the conspiracy theory stuff. It is a dead end and a convenient excuse for not finding evidence. This crime is solvable. It will just take time and some luck. The answers are not in Langley VA. Remember, its a pride thing for the FBI. They DO want the case solved, but understandably wont commit resources to it now because it is stale and there is no currrent threat. If I were running the FBI I'd put a few highly motivated agents on it, but that's not rational. Thsi is crime history, not active crime. How about some responses to the Air America 727 canopy deployment videos that Snow edited? Those do not look like slammer openings to me. And what about Sheridan Peterson? USMC combat vet, Boeing employee in tech publications during 727 rollout period, accomplished skydiver with night jumps, USFS smoke jumper in NW, jumped in Viet Nam (as a civilan), HUGE grudge against the US Govt over atrocities he saw in Viet Nam, probably was short on $$ in 71, resembles the sketches, wrote a protest novel with subtle Norjack parallels, etc Pete's alibi is that he was living in a mud hut in Nepal during the skyjack. The FBI didnt rule him out until they got his DNA. What if the tie DNA did not belong to Cooper? On the other side Pete has zero criminal history and seems to be an honest guy. His stories about old school skydiving check out, including his early use of bat wings and his stories about jumping from Vietnamese military H19 helos in Nam as a civilian. And what about Ted Braden? Why is he ruled out? Eye color? Height? Highly qualified to do the job (SOG jumper in Nam) , criminal history, needed money, was a fugitive, etc. Jo, you seem to think the FBI was intimidating witnesses and trying to get them to change their story about seeing the NWA 727 over certain areas. Why would they care about those stories? What difference would it make? Cooper wasnt found so the witness flight path stories are kinda irrelevant. I also question whether the witnesses could identify the plane type they saw given its altitude, night, rain and scattered clouds. I am a plane nut and I have 20-10 corrected eysight. I have a very hard time identifying airliners at night under conditions far more favorable than those witnesses had during the Norjack flight. Drop all the conspiracy theories and focus on the hard evidence. Conspiracy theories are rat holes Jo. Every time you get stumped you can blame it on a cover up. Investigations usually get nowhere with this method of analysis. Still waiting for you to put Duane in a chute. A spoken remark near Ft Benning doesnt cut it. I wonder how seriously the Army was checking IDs in WW 2. There are so many authentic stories of underaged soldiers and airmen making it in and staying in. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Love that movie! Of course Gene didn't really do any jumping Have any stars done their own jump stunts? Any who are capable? I read that Tom Cruise did solo freefalls for fun but never in his movies. Is that true? Then there is that famous female porn star who is an experienced skydiver and used to jump at Elsinore as I recall. I love Point Break too. Some of the jump photography is stunning. I just wish we really had five minute freefalls from 14K and could chat on the way down like Johnny Utah. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I've got over a hundred C9 jumps and I too thought that Coopers opening shock would be severe. Then Snowmman did some freeze frames from the Air America 727 S/L jumps. The canopies squidded and deployed relatively slowly. I was surprised. It made me rethink my assumptions. Let's say Cooper knew a lot about those jumps. He'd know you could jump a 737 AND that you could deploy a C9 right off the stairs without a sleeve and not suffer a horrible opening shock. Quade raises an issue that I don't even like to think about, but it's VERY possible: that Cooper lost ALL the money during the jump and landed with no loot. Can you imagine? That would be such a serious bummer. If the money was in a bag/container of some sorts and it detached in the violence of the jump, it could fit the known facts. Some money could have separated from the bag before it hit the ground or body of water. I don't have much sympathy for crooks but the thought of Cooper landing in the cold rain and realizing that he had lost all of the money really is pitiful. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

1. A vacuum packed 26 ft Navy Conical. 2. A VERY large screwdriver. 3. Someone else's wallet. Can we vote? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.