377

We ask Snow to make one solo FF jump. He asks us to do ten cutaways. What's wrong with this picture? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Yes! I am afraid. I could lie and say it is the expense of the reserve repacks, but it's really just fear. I am also afraid of BASE jumping from altitudes insufficent to use a reserve. I am afraid to approach hot women at parties. I am afraid that the FBI might really be covering up a massive Cooper conspiracy that involves Duane. I am no longer afraid of the dark. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Pretty hard sponging off of jumpers. At best you will be a second sponge in a serial sponging chain. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Maybe... I watched some tatooed bad ass latino gangsta wannabe secretly puking behind the DZ hanger right before he was going up for a tandem. He seemed to be having a real hard time doing brave. I think brave is hard. I was scared to death on my S/L jumps back in 68. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Damn, I just can't get cheat to win integrated into my skydiver brain. Gary Coleman liked to watch trains. Wonder if he saw Duane riding out of Washington in a boxcar? http://rationreality.com/2007/08/29/gary-coleman-model-railroader-model-american/ Michael Jackson should have taken a clue from Gary with the HO scale setup. Really dumb building NEVERLAND in full scale. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I am desperately trying to modify some eBay sniping code to do the job, but there is still too much random chance. What would Duane do? Could he code a solution? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

ah! I was always curious how much it costs per hour to rent a C-47. I have no idea how much you guys pay for this sport. Skip Evans is DA MAN and N26MA is DA PLANE if you want to do anything DC 3. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnQnMVobGjI I've jumped out of N 26MA with Skip at the helm many many times. We were typically charged $22 to 14,000 feet and there were about 35 of us in the plane. I figure he was making about $1500 an hour. I'd expect to pay about $2000 an hour for a commercial charter, with crew maybe more. They are sloooow. Here are real operating costs: http://www.dc3history.org/operating_costs.htm 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Guys and women. I once saw a thin white haired woman step down from an S2 fire tanker cockpit at Sonoma County Airport. The S2Fs (STOOFS) were the worst, short coupled tail to fit in aircraft carrier elevators , inadequate ruder authority if you lost an engine at high power settings and had a hiccup in the hydraulic rudder boost system. Newbies had trouble spotting the nondescript LZ which was just outside the airport fence. We asked one of the tanker pilots to mark the edge sometime if he had a little slurry left and the DZ wasnt active. He put a nice red line down the eastern boundary of the LZ making it easily seen from the air. I talked with some tanker pilots when they were taking a break. One had lost a good friend in a crash of one of those GIANT Sikorsky S 64 Skycrane water drop helos. They had a rotor crack warning light (rotor blades are lightly pressurized with dry Nitrogen and a pressure switch serves as a crack sensor). They elected to continue flying to their base and the rotor failed in flight. http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS351US351&q=sikorsky+skycrane&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=5ndHS8fvJojUsQPUurH1Dw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCgQsAQwAw Crazy Creek had a fatal collision a few weeks ago between a tow plane and a glider in the landing pattern. I don't think there is jumping there any more. The tower controllers at Sonoma County liked us, at least they did when I talked to them over an after shift beer. Managing traffic around a 12,000 ft vertical tube right next to their runway was a challenge for them and they were up for it. The GA pilots HATED us and eventually ran the DZ off with political pressure. The air museum at the field is pretty cool, lots of military planes including an F 8 Crusader and an F 14 Tomcat. The director is a former SR 71 pilot with some amazing stories. What does this have to do with Cooper? Not much so I'll have to add something. One thing you can be sure of, there is no chance of me getting the first post on page 666, not in a group of skydivers. Can my girlfriend stay at your place in the spare room while I am travelling? Can I leave my brand new rig with you but you gotta promise not to jump it. I have to leave the raffle early. Can I give you my tickets and you'll tell me if I won? It's really important to me to have the first post on page 666 of the DB Cooper forum. I can trust you guys not to jump me right? You get the picture. Oh, about Cooper. I keep wondering why he used Tina as an intermediary to communicate with the cokpit. There is some psych clue here, but I can't quite figure it out. From an operational viewpoint it was a bad idea. Too many chances for errors and also for the crew to warn Tina if they were going to storm the cabin and try to rescue her from Cooper. Cooper should have not allowed her to communicate with the cockpit. Of course if Cooper thought one of the crew might recognize his voice that could explain it. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

As little as humanly possible. If the DZO upgrades from a beat up mobile home to a real house we really messed up. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Duane did them with one hand. Uber-Ranger style. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

H 19? Every time we add a clue it makes Georgers search easier. I am guessing he made at least one jump with Thom Lyons. Just a guess based on time, locations etc. Did you ever jump at the DZ at Santa Rosa? I figured you might have if you live near Snows candidate. I liked that DZ mostly because I got to see all the fire tanker planes in action during the summer. I remember a 98 degree day and a P2V5 Neptune tanker. It used up every inch of runway taking off and looked like it was climbing at about 100 ft per minute. The operator had removed the two aux jets and it was relying 100 percent on its tempermental Wright R 3350 radials. Scary to watch. I guess he could have dropped his retardant load if he lost an engine on climbout but it looked marginal. Those tanker pilots earn their pay the hard way. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Radial engined S 58? I declined an invite to ride in one. Scary aircraft. We had a turbine conversion S 58T at WFFC. It was a little less scary. I LOVE riding in old radial engined jumpships but worry a lot between takeoff and 1000 ft, the death zone. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Sometimes I worry that Jo is already paying some Ivans. She is such a ripe target for con artist "investigators." Who are "my guys"? She will deny it but I wonder if she has fronted some "expense" money to "guys" who claim to be hot on the trail of evidence proving Duane was connected to Norjack, CIA, Rangers etc. She can't provide the evidence because they haven't. They string her along so she has to string us along. She thinks the evidence is coming. We know it isn't. I have always thought Jo was sincere in her beliefs. This explanation preserves that assessment and shows that we are just secondary non paying victims of a classic con. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Jo wrote: Translation: ...NOT ONE of you REALLY want to KNOW what REALLY HAPPENED when Duane jumped from that 727 on that night in Nov. of 1971. Orange is right Jo. You can't answer a yes or no question with a single word. They are always long rambling equivocal statements. You say Duane was Cooper, knew Cooper, etc. The one thing we can depend on is ZERO evidence backing up your claims. You gripe about the FBI withholding evidence. How amusingly hypocritical. If you think Snow is neither rude nor abrasive no wonder you cling to the belief that Duane was Cooper. Both require ignoring contrary evidence. We are ALL interested in solving the case and that includes Ckret and his employer. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Amazon is right, C9s run with the wind and the "steering" you get with a 4 line cut isn't going to turn it into an aerial Ferrari, BUT, any forward drive and some steering can help you miss downwind hazards even in high winds. You can fly perpendicular to the wind to miss hazards. You can run downwind to fly over them. It's all a matter of vectors and visual judgement using angular changes to estimate whether you will undershoot, overshoot or hit a target you are looking at. I have over 100 jumps on a tired porous C9 with just a single T slot, not the more maneuverable TU mod. Even that sluggish beast allowed me to miss power lines, barns, ponds etc in winds that were driving me backwards when I faced into the wind for final. I never collided with a hazard or even came really close. I get to hang out with Amazon because I have been baptized in the church of the round canopy. The good old days were good, but the good old gear was crap. Nobody appreciates squares like those who have jumped surplus rounds. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Talk about DISLUSIONAL!!! 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Back when I trained in 68 they showed us what lines to cut to make a stock canopy steerable. They (4 lines) were colored near the riser connections on my reserve, even though it was civilian rigger modifed with a T slot cutout and was steerable. Maybe the colors were put on by the Navy? I doubt if Cooper could see much on the ground, but if he had a knife and was trained like I was, he could have made the C9 steerable by cutting four lines. It wouldn't give it a lot of forward speed but any forward drive and the ability to turn is a HUGE help in avoiding hazards. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I keep thnking Ckret has some key piece of info that the FBI is not disclosing. He appeared to rule out Snow's candidate very fast with no significant further investigation. That "loadmaster" part has always seemed too specific to me to be pure speculation. They'd be pretty dumb not to hold back a few key pieces of evidence that they could use to rule out self confessed wannnabes etc. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Sara Palin can see Russian UFOs from her window. She can't even get that AK SLAKKER Levi to marry Bristol. So much for her leadership ability. I like it that she is a commercial fisher, but my AK friends tell me that her story is exagerrated, mostly a few fashion photoshoots on a gillnetter. Snowmman really likes to see Sara in those yellow rubber Helly Hansen rain slickers, even though she has no Icelandic blood. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Jo has never responded to Sluggo's earnest suggestion about going on Coast to Coast AM. Jo this radio audience is HUGE, many many thousands. One of them might have known Duane or know of some evidence that you will never find here with on audience of a few dozen. why not give it a try? I am SURE they'd be interested in your story: I was married to DB Cooper." I don't think Duane was Cooper or even knew who he was but you have a better case for Duane being Cooper than many of the guests on the show do for their cases. I'll be listening for you. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Correct! I just keep thinking that if he drowned or augered into the Death woods and hasnt been found, someone would have pieced two and two together with a missing person... UNLESS he was domiciled overseas and his failure to return would have been seen as a Yank repatriating and not seen as a suspicious disappearance. Snow's Boeing employee-Smoke jumper-Skydiver suspect was domiciled in a VERY obscure rural OUS place before Nojack, but he is alive. If he had died, I doubt if he would have been missed where he had been living. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Speaking of the KoolAid crowd, was it Snow who proposed Hunter Thompson as a suspect? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Cool Farflung. One of my coworkers was an AC in B52Gs and Hs. He rarely calls them B52s, just Buffs. I am a total airplane nut, but not a real pilot (about ten hours solo in ultralights). I have USAF dash one and NATOPS flight manuals for many acft including B 36 (ten engines!) B 52 and KC 135. Lots of airliner flight manuals too including most of the Boeings and Douglases. I even have a flight manual for a Boeing 377. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I once exited a firewalled C 130 Herc at 14,000 ft. I was carrying instrumentation to record pressure fluctuations to help analyse AAD performance during unstable exits. Cypres wanted to be sure there would not be inadvertent reserve deployments during such exits. Gear up, no flaps, going really fast. It was violent. I'll bet we were doing at least 260 knots. I got a t shirt and some stickers as compensation. I was sure I could do a stable exit but I tumbled like a rag doll in a dryer for quite a few seconds. Humbling. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I've been jumping for 42 years. Jumpers care about airspeed (they prefer slow as it makes stable exits easier) and groundspeed (They like to know roughly what it is so that they can assure sufficient delays between exiting groups so that they won't be on top of each other raising collision risks). I was once spotting on a jump run with over 60 knots of headwind. I had guys screaming at me to exit but I waited and waited to give adequate horizontal separation from the group the exited before mine. Ground winds were only 15 knots. Jumpers don't care much about aircraft configuration. On my DC 9-21 jet jump gear was up and we had some flaps. Same thing on my DC 4 jumps. On many DC 3 jumps gear was down in addition to some flap extension. Nobody jumping cared about gear position, just speed. We left it up to the PIC to figure out how to give us a slow exit speed. Farflung: What aircraft types are in your logbook? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.