377

Good one Snow! There is some twisted DZ joke somewhere that goes like: She's really not your wife, just your turn. There was a lot of "recycling" of DZ mates back in the day. Any guy who was jumping in the 70s who denies that is still married and lying. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

McCoy's wife sounds really interesting. Wonder if she is still single? JUST KIDDING. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Patterson's reserve canopy had a serial number. Riggers record those numbers. It would have been traceable even without the AAD. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

The book kinda makes him sound dumb, but forget the book at look at a few facts that might suggest otherwise. McCoy was a military helicopter pilot. Few of them are stone dumb. It is hard to get selected for flight training and flying a helicopter in real or simulated combat conditions is not something a dumb person could do well. If he got his wings, and he did, then I don't put him in the dumb box. Judgment is another matter, starting with his choice of a spouse... but if you use that as a criteria and knew my ex, you'd think I was dumb too. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

***Yeah it's weird, he described that second chute as a "small sport chute" but that doesn't make sense, he wouldn't bring a 2nd main to act as a reserve. It's probably not decipherable about what that borrowed container/canopy was (A guy's name is provided though..I mean isn't it weird that he borrowed another guy's rig of some kind, for the hijack along with his own as main. (because he wanted the automatic deployment device)Quote If it had an AAD it was 99.99% certain to be a reserve. Almost nobody had them on mains during the time of the hijack. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Commander undoubtedly refers to the Pioneer Paracommander sport canopy which could be packed into any main container that had enough volume. Squares were around in 71 but were not mature and McCoy had probably never jumped one. Paracommanders were called PCs in the days before personal computers. PCs were very maneuverable compared to surplus round canopies and had decent forward drive. The only downside was a higher malfunction rate, but it was not a lot higher. If a hijacker specified a "Commander" it was highly likely that he knew something about skydiving. The mention of McCoy's North Star altimeter brought back memories. I collect skydiving altimeters and have two North Star models. I still jump them once in a while. They had a stupid design error and had only three screw mount holes 90 degrees apart. If you used suspension line loops to tie your altimeter to a mount (common) you had to improvise a forth connection point. Didn't McCoys wife sue some publisher and win a settlement? Maybe all that talk about her being an accomplice couldn't be proven and she had a good slander/defamation case. Disparate justice (unequal punishment for equal crimes) literally makes me sick. That one kid from a "good family" gets a light sentence for the same crime that they gave McCoy 45 years for. McCoy probably needed a better lawyer. If you are a criminal defendant you might not want to pick a lawyer who is angling for a judicial appointment. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Another indicator that suggests McCoy was not Cooper is his fear of getting a tail strike and being knocked out. That's why he carried a reserve with an AAD. There is no indication that Cooper struck any aircraft structure on exit. If McCoy were Cooper he wouldn't have taken all those unnecessary precautions. Cooper knew you could just jump and be clear of the 727. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Sounds like McCoy experienced a Sentinel AAD activation. Puzzling that it could happen on ascent, I'll ask Nitrochute to comment as he was employed by the mfr. Perhaps cabin pressurization went from an altitude above 1500 ft to below 1500 ft or whatever the trigger altitude was. McCoy talks about having preset the "altimeter" (I thing they meant AAD, early ones incorporated a visual altimeter) to go off at 3500 ft in an earlier National Guard helo flight. I guess he could fool with the baro calibration knob used to zero out the AAD on the ground and trick it to activate higher than its normal preset trigger point. Nitrochute, your comments? The description of trying to stuff the reserve back into a sleeve is wrong, reserves don't have sleeves. They are misdescribing a container as a sleeve most likely. Being a radio nut I am curious what kind of transmitters the FBI had Perry put into the chutes and what turned them on. If they were USAF bailout beacons like the URT 21 or URT 33, they would have to be turned on when packed as the sport rigs don't have the right hardware to activate them on chute deployment. Four turned on beacons on the military distress frequency of 243.0 Mhz would raise quite a fuss as the flight progressed. Civilian aircraft are not equipped with UHF AM radios and would not hear the transmitters. If they were some sort of FBI bugging transmitter those were usually VHF FM and on frequencies outside the coverage of both civilian and military aircraft. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

WOW! Perry Stevens taught me how to skydive. Starting around age 11, I began taking public transit to the Oakland Airport North Field which still had a bunch of semi derelict propliners sitting on the tarmac well into the 1960s. I just liked looking at the old planes and hanging out. There was lots to see back then before 9-11 security concerns made hanging out at airports nearly impossible. The unfenced fire dump had a Lockheed Connie carcass and you could walk around inside it. Radial engines were often tested on an outside test stand with earsplitting noise and flaming exhausts. A contractor was overhauling T 33 jets for the USAF and the work was done right next to the fence. Once a guard let me inside the fence to peek inside an old Transocean Stratocruiser (my favorite derelict) that had been sitting unused for years. The seats had been removed but otherwise it appeared complete and almost ready to fly. It appeared that the old Strat was getting some mechanical attention that day. Perhaps my optimistic outlook was skewing the picture and I was really just witnessing a pre-scrapping inspection. The plane seemed like a living thing to me and I dearly hoped that it would not be slaughtered. I always wondered what happened to that beautiful plane. Not even one Stratocruiser survives today so it was either scrapped or perhaps converted into a Guppy (oversized cargo plane based on a Strat airframe) giving it a few more years of flight. I was born to jump. I started making parachutes out of my Mom's scarves and launching my toy soldiers at age 4. By age 7, I was making chutes out of bedsheets and clothesline and jumping off our garage. At age 12 my family stopped at a DZ in Calistoga CA. I had never seen skydiving before. I was HOOKED! The jumpers were nice to me and tolerated endless "kid" questions about their gear, training and freefall. After about 30 minutes my parents and three brothers grew tired of the DZ and wanted to leave. I BEGGED them to stay and got another hour of hanging out with real skydivers. One of them told me that I should be patient, wait until I was 18 and then come back and jump with them. As soon as I turned 18 I set out to be a real skydive. I started my skydiving ground school classes at the Oakland airport at Stevens Paraloft in 1968. Perry Stevens was a great teacher who emphasized safety and cautioned against taking unnecessary risks. He gave our class case studies of skydiving fatalities and drilled into us how each could have been prevented. He suspended us in a harness and projected slides on the ceiling showing various canopy problems. He would spin us, shake us and yell at us calling out descending altitude numbers and telling us that we'd be dead in ten seconds unless we made the right decisions and acted on them immediately. We cutaway and fell onto a pile of foam sheets and were critiqued. He would try to trick us into hesitating, into cutting away from good canopies and correct us until we all did it right every time. He actually kicked one girl out because she could not do it right. She would cutaway OK and then forget to pull the reserve time after time. He said if you can't be certain you can handle a malfunction on your very first jump, you don't jump. Some instructors today might not be so harsh. When I faced my first canopy malfunction, Perry's training paid off. Everything he taught popped back into my head fueled by massive adrenaline flow and fear. It is scary looking up, expecting to see an open canopy and seeing a mess. You know that in ten seconds you will be dead unless you intervene and do what was back then a fairly complex sequence of hardware activations (Capewell cutaway). You had to do each step correctly and do them in the right sequence. Even under extreme stress I thankfully made all the right decisions and made them quickly. I survived my first skydiving emergency because of Perry's excellent training. Nobody trains newbies for emergencies like he did and I bet some fatalities could have been prevented had his training been the norm. Perry's training saved my life. I am forever indebted to him. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I noticed that too. Maybe the FBI has secret packing instructions for skyjack chutes. Cossey is just covering up when he says he wasn't there at the loft. They can't pack a bent pin impossible pull, too much like an execution... but a hard hard pull? No problem. Having experienced a hard hard pull on a surplus rig, I can tell you it gets your adrenaline going BIG TIME. At night, tumbling out of a fast jet? Terrifying. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Other jumpers should chime in, but the 20-30 second blackout makes no sense to me unless he got into a vicious spin and centrifuged his brain. The spun up suspension lines might be consistent with this. Also, few planes can launch parachute flares. USAF and USCG HC 130s can. Magnesium flares aren't red and green, just white. Few planes have controllable (pan and tilt) searchlights. Navy ASW planes had them (P2V Neptune, S2 Tracker, P3 Orion), SAR helos have them, but that's about it. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

From an experienced pilot who doesn't care to get into the fray here: See this page for conversions in either direction: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/velocity-units-converter-d_1035.html Use the info at that site to convert either way. Airspeed is the aircraft's speed through the air. Ground speed is speed across the ground considering any wind component. We know the tailwind and ground speed so the Airspeed will be ground speed minus the tailwind component. In kts: 180-43=137 kts in mph: 207-50=157 mph Therefore, the ground speed is 157 mph or 137 kts. The question becomes "What is the slowest speed at which a 727 will fly?" if we are to evaluate the "correctness" of Capt Hearn. I found a site which indicates various speeds for the 727-200F which may or not be of some help: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:JiBezeaGCRkJ:www.atlanticsunairways.com/training/checklist_b727f.pdf+727+flaps+down+speed&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a You can search through that manual for comparative speeds. Notice that landing speed for touch down is 140 KIAS. [knots indicated air speed] Lots of good info for the DBC freaks to drool over. So...I'd say the 136 airspeed is rather slow but the tailwind business is total nonsense. Who ever wrote that misunderstood something that was said. I can't believe an airline captain would say that. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Thanks Sluggo, very interesting. If Bohan was flying directly towards a VORTAC on a southerly course he would just have to look at his DME groundspeed, his indicated airspeed, and the difference would be a pretty good estimate of his headwinds, no computers needed. He knew the prevailing wind direction from ATC reports and could guesstimate the situation. Can you verify from a sectional chart that some part of his approach course would have taken him directly to (or nearly directly) the the VORTAC station used for PDX fixes while on a course headed into the reported prevailing wind direction? Any experienced pilot would take note of a big delta between airspeed and ground speed especially on approach as high windspeed can have a HUGE effect on landing issues. In landings, wind is your friend head on, your enemy behind unless you have a super long runway and can be difficult or even dangerous if crosswind. There is a limit to what crosswind velocities airliners can handle safely. Good work Sluggo and thanks for not putting this in the secret vault. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

3 night jumps 6 mo after first jump would be unusual. Many light jumps are not part of license qualifications and come about almost by accident. My very first jump in 1968 was a night jump, the sun had gone below the horizon. Winds, delays, etc just made the takeoff later than planned, then the girl in front of me froze on the strut, so we had to make a second jump run etc etc. When I was under canopy the cars I could see on the roads all had their headlights on. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

No, it's all wrong. I am going to ask a pilot to explain so I dont put my foot in my mouth. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Tailwind has NOTHING to do with staying airborne. Pilots, back me up here. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

His tranquil flat LZ looks scary if you take in the context of the jump and look at the surrounding terrain. At night and at jet speeds just a few minutes off and he is in some very steep mountains. Did he wear any disguise on the plane? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Snow, You could write for This American Life on NPR. You definitely have the knack. I keep thinking about the chute. It has to be out there somewhere. It made no sense to pack it out. Once Cooper successfully exited the LZ there would be no need to come back for it, who cares if it is discovered? I realize this post adds nothing new, but I just cannot get that Cooper main chute out of my mind. If they could find a tiny door placard how could a rig be so hard? I don't even see any reason Cooper would have buried it very carefully, just enough to avoid air detection while he was still in the area exiting. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

That handicap can be easily remedied. Just say the word when the weather gets warmer. I used to drive an hour or more each way to freeze on winter jumps. Now I just drive 13 minutes and fly in a warm tunnel until summer arrives. I have really turned into a weather wimp. No more frozen fingers or muddy gear. Here's the plan: No tandem, waste of money. A few tunnel sessions (my treat, I have some prepaid block time, offer stands for Ckret too) until you fly stable, then straight to AFF where you will make a great first jump. After that you can retire from skydiving if you wish, but no more whuffo status. If you go all the way to your A license and Perris gets past the stupid FAA hassles on their DC 9 engines, then a jet jump is in your future. Perris's DC 9 has an engine that is way under the max hours allowed before overhaul, but is timed out on chronological age. OH is hundreds of thousands of dollars, so hopefully common sense will prevail and the FAA will reconsider. The FAA is not known for such logic or common sense. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Snow, Reconsider your cancellation. Newspapers these days will bend over backwards to keep subscribers. They even have "retention specials" that they cannot offer you until you say "cancel". Print newspapers have been as valuable a resource as the FBI in bringing public corruption to light. The new breed of CNN and Internet journalists just do not pound the pavement. They just email, blog and Google search. They just sort and parse rumors. Newspapers do appear doomed, but we can help them hold on long enough to morph into something that can survive. That help is a subscription. There is a big difference between finding news at its source and finding news on the Internet. One is journalism, the other is parasitic regurgitation and is the friend of corruption. Nobody will breathe a bigger sigh of relief than corrupt public officials when the last newspaper shuts down. I agree with you on the sensationalism and weirdness creeping into the headlines of Internet news sites. That Chimp mauling is still getting front page as is Jennifer's thoughts about Brad Maybe someday the Internet journalists will rediscover what the hard drinking grizzled print reporters knew about finding deeply hidden newsworthy stories. It probably wont happen unless you take their Internet access away and how likely is that? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

All I am doing is trying to change a forum mindset that if Cooper landed alive it was in horrendously hostile conditions and survival though the night was doubtful. I was even starting to think that way. Hell, he might have landed in a soft flat pasture very near a road and got lucky hitchiking with a story about a car stranded on a backroad nearby. It is far from impossible and appears to actually be at least as likely as the deep woods nightmare we so quickly embrace. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

If you just do a random drop into the possible areas what are the rough odds of reasonably non hazardous LZ terrain and proximity to exit paths such as roads? Maybe his landing and exit wasnt nearly the wilderness/survival ordeal we all picture. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Toaster? Baloney. Bet you have proprietary supercooled GAAS detectors of your own design and an antenna farm that would put Jodie Foster's "Contact" array to shame. You run galactic ATC for UFOs, admit it or the antenna photos will be posted forthwith. As far as Bohan goes, it is such a minor claim (high winds, not "I saw Cooper exit and deploy") that it just doesn't raise my sceptical eyebrow. I see no motive for Ralph H to make it up and it isnt a preposterous weather claim. I was on a jumpship once that enountered 65-70 kts of headwinds at 14,000 ft when it was only about 5-10 kts on the ground below. It was weird, the guys exiting before me fell directly straight down from the plane despite about 70kts of jumpship airspeed. The plane appeared to be motionless above the DZ. You can get big speed gradients with altitude. The real question isnt whether Bohan existed, it is what were the winds that Cooper encountered on his jump. We have some data and can extrapolate the credible extremes in variations that he may have encountered. It is all so vague because the precise exit point is still a guess. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I see Tom has not responded to my question about whether he shared my doubts about the reported facts of the money find. I can't draw any conclusions from that silence although I'd sure like to. We are using Tena Bar as a datum and trying to backplot to a Cooper landing (or splatter) site. I continue to wonder if someone moved the survey marker. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Might be able to do a rough cut, depends on course changes and seeing differences in ground and airspeed as plane heading changes. I think you need at least a 180 differnce in headings during the track to have enough info for a full windspeed solution. That would assure that the plane flew directly into or with the wind at some point which would give you a peak or dip in groundspeed. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.