377

I was watching my wrist altimeter when jumpers ahead of me were exiting the DC 9-21 at WFFC 2006. We exited at about 14,000 ft AGL. I could very clearly feel (in my ears) every single jumper exit. I could have been blindfolded and accurately counted every exiting jumper. It was kind of a swoosh with a mild thunk at the end of the "noise". The corresponding wrist altimeter needle movement was not really noticeable. Maybe the 727 FE panel cabin altimeter is more sensitive. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

VERY COOL!!! Tell your Dad there is a surplus C 130A still flying with 3 bladed props. I have made a bunch of jumps from it five years ago (N131EC). I think it was made in 1958. What model Connies did he fly? EC 121? C 121C? FEs really earned their pay keeping those turbo compound R 3350s running. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Orange, Nothing worse than flying over a DZ with a door that you can't (legally) open. Cooper, however, had his own rules. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Hmmmm Snow, that's not a bad theory. Not bad at all. It never ceases to amaze me how you parse new stuff out of old info that to me, has been thoroughly analyzed and isn't worth revisiting. I have viewed aerial landscapes at night and made errors based on seeing what I expected to see rather than what is actually there. You initially make the scene fit your expectation and ignore the inconsistent stuff. In a short time as a window gazing passenger, you realize your error, but the NWA crew was very busy with other stuff and probably wasn't spending a lot of time looking at the ground landmarks. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Snow, You really find great radar info. Keep it coming. There is a new approach to inexpensive marine radar that I think will interest you and G. It uses an very linear FM chirp in the transmitted signal and apparently looks at the frequency of the echo to determine distance. The radiated power is only 100 milliwatts!!! You can stand in in front of the radar antenna, something you'd never want to do with the standard 4+ KW X band radars that this unit will compete with. Check out the video, the resolution in the radar echo displayed are pretty amazing. http://www.simrad-yachting.com/en/Products/Leisure/Broadband-Radar/Broadband-Radar/ The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) you referred to produces amazing pictures, almost like photos. It uses aircraft displacement and various timing and phasing tricks to create the equivalent of a huge airborne radar antenna thus giving very high spatial resolution. Quade should challenge a few other of Jo's assumptions and conclusions. She does seem to listen to him. Nobody is going to convince her that Duane had nothing to do with NORJACK, but Quade might use Occam's razor to slice off some of the far out fringe stuff. How can people say that the Cooper mystery will never be solved? All it takes is finding remains and an unopened rig, or some hot twenties in a safe deposit box or anything like that. The case is very solvable, but it takes a lucky break. Methodical plodding isn't likely to do it. 377 on the 377th page of this forum. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I worked for Hughes, the company that made the SAGE interface gear on the F 106, called the MA1 fire control system. SAGE's computers could actually issue autopilot commands to airborne F 106s and steer them to an intercept target. When it was up, it worked well, but reliability was a problem. The USAF likely had very good info on the NWA 727's flight path, 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Was I the only one who noticed Quade's remarkable persuasive powers over Jo? When we attack Jo's logic she fights back hard. Quade obtained a remarkable result: Jo agreed that her logic was flawed. Orange and I have been trying all year to do what Quade did in one cameo appearance. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

You are 100% right Snow, I just wasn't figuring the 727's range to the radar station being that far. It is a trivial negligible error. Duh. My bad. Where do the big reported errors in the GPS vs radar position come from? Time of echo arrival ranging is easy to do with high accuracy. Are there non isotropic propagation delays for microwave radar signals? What is the source of error? I am taking bets on your Washougal survival but few are being placed. I am saying you make it out alive, stealthily avoiding Jerry's trained killer bears and savage pit bulls dressed in racoon costumes. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I hear ya Georger. I know a very accomplished PhD physical scientist who literally believes the world was created in seven days. It is in the Bible so it is true, PERIOD! He goes into tortured twisted relativistic time distortion theories to make it work out. Einstein and Feynman would blanche. Hey, whatever makes you sleep well and not fear death. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

If you want that kind of an answer ("we don't know") don't look on dropzone.com. EVERYONE here has an answer if the question is about any aspect of jumping. I have never base jumped but I have all sorts of opinions about the gear, terrain, safety etc. Only the fear of peer review and criticism makes me keep my mouth shut. If the FBI asked me about base jumping, I'd fill their ears for hours. The FBI and federal prosecutors sometimes make BIG mistakes in their selection of outside experts. I saw it a few times in criminal trials. It is understandable. You have to be an expert in a field to really know the experts in a field and be able to distinguish them from the pretenders, wannabes or quasi experts. Often the real experts are too busy doing real science or engineeering and the wannabes are touting theselves in forensic publication expert witness advertisements. In 1971 I was certain I knew what Cooper experienced jumping and probably immediately deploying from a 727. It was incredibly violent. I hadn't seen the Air Americal 727 jump films and didnt know the extent of my ignorance. Didn't Duane sing some song about 'you never know what you dont know"? How right he was. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Indeed I do Orange. At this little Cessna DZ I jumped at about 8 years ago, they had a custom welded steel step mounted over the landing gear wheel. Tandem pairs exited standing on the step and holding on to the strut. The passengers were so scared climbing out. It was just terrifying to many and I can sure see why. They couldn't close their eyes (as many door exiting tandem passengers do) because they had to grab on to the strut and assist in positioning for the exit. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

You nailed it Orange. If you dont believe in Occam's razor then you'd catalog Asimov's novels in the non fiction section of the library. Why are conspiracies, UFOs, ghosts and other such things so much more enticing and fun than plain old physics and physiology? To me Occam's razor often slices the fun out of things. It says forget the wild bizzare theories , pursue the ordinary explanations. Yawn... Sigh.... No wonder those "new age" belivers are always smiling. They really think if they get their mantra, chakra and aura just right, they can levitate. I am resigned to purchasing rides in airplanes. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

To you maybe you ever seen a tandem pax jumping from a cessna? most of the time it is a BIG deal! how many jumps did you have when you jumped the jet, 377? Any tandem jump from a Cessna is a big scary hassle. I have watched the sheer terror up close too many times. I have always worried that some Cessna tandem passenger would throw up, they looked close. I think that getting out on the strut is terrifying to newbies. Stepping out of an open door is not. You fear falling off of things that you are hanging on to. Also, the prop is scary to newbies and it is very close. I was told that tandem jumps were made from the DC 9 jet with no problems, but I didnt witness any. Everyone on the jet had at least 50 jumps (WFFC jump requirement, and a bit low in my opinion) and most like me had hundreds. It is funny how impressed whuffos are with a jet jump. Many mention DB Cooper when they ask about the jump. It was really a very easy jump with a big wind blast but nothing difficult or scary. The high exit speed meant that jumpers were spread out for miles so there were no serious freefall or canopy traffic issues. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Does any one know if slant range corrections were calculated for the radar data? Most ATC radars of that era just had a rotating antenna. Two planes, one at 1000 ft and one at 10,000 ft, both over the exact same ground position would appear displaced from each other on the radar screen because the higher target echo takes a bit longer to return to the radar receiver than the lower one does. One echo path is the hypotenuse of a right triangle and one is the base. Some USAF air defense radars also had a nodding (vertical up and down sweep) height finder radar to supplement what the horizontal sweep radar found and could give altitude info. Since we had altitiude info from the NWA flight data recorder slant angle/range corrections could be made manually. Were they made? You wouldn't get huge ground position errors from failure to correct for slant angle/range, but they are errors and we should know if they were corrected. This article gives a discussion of the slant range issue from the perspective of an airborne radar, but just flip the discussion upside down and you get the Cooper ground radar setup. http://www.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/resource/tutor/stereo/chap5/chapter5_8_e.php EDIT: Here is something simpler and more to the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slant_range 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Georger wrote: I agree with G., but I don't view Occam's razor as a bias. It is common sense. If you don't use it, you can bring in the paranormal/conspiracies/new age "science" etc. to explain all mysteries. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I don't know Snow, sounds like a pleasant afternoon to me. It is just like hunting or fishing, you know. A few tall tales are expected. Talk about "the one that got away"... Cooper is the ULTIMATE. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Like I said, ornery and tenacious. Do you need any more proof? I'd just stand in the middle of the road looking like a normal person in distress, make up a sympathetic story and hope for the best. There was a military jet pilot who ejected somewhere in California (in the 60s?, near the coast, perhaps a water chute landing). He made it to a busy road and couldn't get motorists to stop for him for a long time. He was bloody and bedraggled as I recall the news stories. He finally made it to a pay phone and got an operator to place an emergency call for him. Snow should teach survival training to military pilots. Carjacking is definitely on the Snowmman's post ejection survival menu. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

We all have our biases and it is true that an FBI agent gets a lot more instant credibility than we do, much of it undeserved. Still, I just cannot put Ralph in the whack job category. It is because of my bias in favor of pilots who can fly very complex high performance aircraft successfully. Ralph flew P 51s and P 40s in a military environment. That takes a LOT of aviation skill and a reasonable amount of intelligence. Ralph knows aviation. He has been in it a long time and, at least initially, at a very high skill and training level. Instrument flight in P 51s and P 40s involved no VOR, no DME, just a radio compass (ADF) and an ILS and marker beacon receiver. Pilots from that era understand air navigation in a basic way that new pilots with the benefits of VOR, DME, GPS etc never will. Ralph is far more than a weekend Bonanza pilot. I just don't think he is going to make some huge dumb mistake about any aviation aspect of the case. Bias? Sure, we all are biased. Whack job? Nahhh, not in my book. I am not trying to curry favor with Ralph, just give him the respect he deserves on aviation matters. He could be way off base on other aspects of the case but I think on aviation related aspects he probably knows what he is talking about. That doesn't mean his speculative conclusions are correct, just that he has the smarts and training to make some good guesses. I sure wish he had interviewed thr NWA pilots. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

It would have been easy for Cooper to have one hand on the ripcord handle as he exited. The Air America 727 jump videos (and especially Snow's frame clips) showed, to my great surprise, that an immediate post exit round sleeveless canopy deployment was not especially violent. A hard pull (C 9 canopy in an unextended NB6 container?) and subsequent panic, tumbling and disorientation could mean Cooper never deployed, but we have no evidence about that. I have jumped from a jet (DC9). It isnt really such a big deal. If Cooper pulled, he landed alive in my opinion. Jerry seems to say, and I have to give him some deference here because he knows the territory, that even if Cooper landed alive in the area where Jerry thinks he came down, he didnt survive the night. Snow disputes that and has offered (for a price) to emulate a Cooper landing in the Washougal and come out to civilization on his feet, not in a body bag. I have a mini 121.5 MHz rescue beacon that I will loan to Snow along with an APRS tracking beacon that will post his position to this website every few minutes should he decide to go. http://aprs.fi/ I think Snow actually could get funding for a reenactment jump. He'd have to learn how to skydive but that would only take a couple of months. I'd bet on Snow just cause he is such an ornery tenacious guy and has a lot of outdoor experience in harsh conditions. Jerry would bet against him based on his local knowledge and military survival training. Georger would bet with Jerry for sure. Orange? Sluggo? Guru? Nigel? Jo? others? Where would you place your bets? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Hard to understand why he would keep this critical info to himself for years. Is there any credible theory about how Rat might have been unaware of the actual area searched until many years later??? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Who was the NWA pilot who was an "expert parachutist" and supplied the canopy drift info? Surely any NWA pilot who was a skydiver would have taken a huge interest in the case. Would be interesting to figure out who he was, see if he is still alive and if he (or she?) is interested in talking about the investigation. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I have experience with pumps of all kinds from my work on commercial fishing boats. We used a lot of big centrifugal pumps but also flexible rubber impeller pumps and some gear pumps too. Surprisingly big things can pass through centrifugal pumps relatively unharmed. If you take a centrifugal pump apart you can see the dimensions available for an entering item to get a "lucky break" and pass through unshredded. The so called blades are really vanes and items sucked in can pass between them. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Wouldn't their VOR/DME readout make this fairly easy to determine? They can get distance (DME) and bearing (VOR) to a VORTAC station. That and a little map reading would give you a decent idea of present position and deviation from V23. The FE could do it if the pilots were busy. It is an easy task, I think. Pilots? Please add your opinions. Jo is still boldfacing and colorizing but being quite civil. Jerry, Snow, Sluggo and Georger are having a cordial productive dialogue about flight tracks and the reliability of the data. There is peace in the valley. Savor it. Preserve it. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

we'd like to keep the conversation about DB Cooper confined to this ONE thread. The biggest reason is so it doesn't spin off into 10,000 threads which are much more difficult to manage.*** Quade obviously has been trained in infectious disease control. Diagnose, segregate, isolate. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Bet you could tie square knots between suspension lines and bunched up nylon material at the skirt. You know all about knots Snow, your opinion? What courage this guy had. Absolutely amazing story. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.