Orange1

eh. legality, possibility of losing gear, payment for reserve repacks, filling in incident reports every time, etc. been discussed a few times. I think this really sums up the answer: if you really want, go read this thread: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2947488;search_string=intentional%20cutaway;#2947488 Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

My bold... nice thinking. But would that he mean he knew who the crew was going to be? And that a pilot but not the cabin crew might recognise him? Implies a significant level of knowledge and planning? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

During a flood you have other dynamics working like houses and trees and cars and other debris washing along and crushing mangling the bodies or burial under rock or mud. Without those dynamics.. in a river with normal flow its just not common. The amount of fisherman all over the Lower Columbia River going after Salmon , Steelhead, and Sturgeon all fall winter and spring are litterally hundreds of boats a day during the slow periods during the week to many thousands every weekend. those are a LOT of eyes... not to mention all those hooks. Point taken re debris, however maybe I should have mentioned that some of the bodies that were found, were eventually found in Mossel Bay - the town on the sea. I'll check the distance but it is probably a few hundred km's away. So people were searching all along and still didn't find 72 bodies.. I realise it's a different river system etc but still an illustration i think. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

well that's a theory. jump, get on a train, lose some money at Tena Bar. Like I say, why do people prefer complicated scenarios, when the simple ones aren't excluded? Doesn't mean Cooper had to get on a train. Money fell somewhere, hobo picked them up and dropped them, they fell on the train (what times did trains run? sure it's far fetched but...) Oh and all this fanciful prison theory. Ken Kesey imprisoned in California and after that returned to his famiy home in... Oregon. Timothy Leary was also imprisoned at Folsom. Between the KNOWN grudges against the CIA/govt respectively, and the Kool-Aid angle, surely that makes these guys at least as likely a candidate for Cooper as Duane? Jo, can you pleae prove that neither was Cooper? Jo, you asked what we would do if you are right. We have all told you this before: we would eat humble pie and congratulate you on being vindicated. However after a few years of promising proof that always poofs, it is clear that you are NOT right because you would have proved it by now. When someone asks you a simple yes or no question, you always give a long rambling response that can really be summed up in one word: "no". (Like the recent question about the notebook, as just one example.) Come on - I dare you - show us we are wrong. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Interestingly I was last night watching a documentary on a flood at a town called Laingsburg in 1981. One river leading into another down to the sea a few hundred km's away would have been the water flow. 72 bodies were never found. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

or proxy-confessed wannabes like Weber and Gosset?! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Jumpers have training that shows them how to steer a parachute and how to find a suitable landing area. If they get thrown out at night and can't see what is below them - especially if they have not jumped where they planned - I can't necessarily see anything that would make a difference between where jumpers and (previous) non-jumpers would land. We discussed visibility before. As I recall, consensus was that the river would have been hard to identify from above. Amazon, others with night jumps in non-civilian DZ areas... any comments - would the river have been clear to a jumper under the weather conditions listed? So the only feedback is from your eyes and steering? What about pre-planning: i.e. I know there's a big river near Portland. Make sure you jump before or after Portland. Not near it. Rivers are bad. Wouldn't that reflect training I could use, even if I only suspected where Portland was? Or do jumpers not think like that? Well, most civilian jumpers are trained to jump at a DZ and know where the outs are. I'm sure US rules are the same as here, where are you only allowed to do a night jump at a DZ if you have already jumped it during the day. All very different to Cooper's jump which is why I asked Amazon etc to talk about non-civilian night jumps. I'm not sure how much 'before' or 'after' Portland (or wherever) you would know is right given unknown wind drift factors, exact spot etc. You've already seen here how you can drift for miles, especially if Cooper opened on exit. Remember that discussion? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Chest strap issues aside, the main problem for me is the size of the harnesses generally available. Even the 'small' student harness at my DZ was too big. I guess as more smaller girls get into the sport more student and rental gear, decent 2nd hand rigs etc will become available but it does take time. The main point though was that criticizing the scenario in the video because the guy was wearing an ill-fitting harness, imo wasn't appropriate, the fact is that many jumpers for whatever reason do end up jumping harnesses that are not an optimal fit. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Jumpers have training that shows them how to steer a parachute and how to find a suitable landing area. If they get thrown out at night and can't see what is below them - especially if they have not jumped where they planned - I can't necessarily see anything that would make a difference between where jumpers and (previous) non-jumpers would land. We discussed visibility before. As I recall, consensus was that the river would have been hard to identify from above. Amazon, others with night jumps in non-civilian DZ areas... any comments - would the river have been clear to a jumper under the weather conditions listed? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Sure, but lots of jumpers end up jumping with harnesses that don't fit properly. Especially inexperienced jumpers on student or rental gear or buying second hand gear that was custom made for someone else. Problem seems especially acute for smaller females. I've had rental harnesses start to slip down my shoulders on climb-out before... but have always had chest and legstraps well fastened and survived those till i got my own rig. (And I never, ever got out of the student habit of asking for a gear check and when I get back to jumping I plan to get back to that habit too.) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Are you sure there was such a request? I do not believe Cooper asked for the gears to be down - he asked for the stairway to be down. These are things I let OTHER worry about. Sluggo was the fact keeper - What does the FIOA state? Have you read it? Jo, I gave you the link to the FOIA docs months ago. Are you saying you still haven't read them? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Look, I haven't read the posts that brought up Kool Aid. But presumably when we are talking late 60s/early 70s there is one HUGELY obvious implication of Kool Aid? What are people saying, that Cooper was on LSD when he did the hijack?? I expected Kool Aid to bring in Jim Jones and his cult. Im surprised Nomman didnt go there and bring us photos of Jonestown .... or the Great Wall ... or Mons Olympus .... or something? Did the FBI question Ken Kesey or Timothy Leary in connection with the Cooper case? They sure would have had major grudges...!! ...and would explain the Kool Aid edit: in fact it appears Kesey actually took part in the MKUltra experiments with LSD... here we go full circle (well, as far as it is possible to go full circle on a tangent ) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Did we have any previous posts about this club?? Did the FBI talk to them?? Yeah its where theparachutes were brought to the plane from. Long gone now.. but a long time home of the Seattle Skydivers. They moved from there back to Snohomish..... where I jump since its only a few miles form my house.. I knew the parachutes came from Issaquah but I wasn't aware that it was called the Boeing Employee Skydivers Club! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Look, I haven't read the posts that brought up Kool Aid. But presumably when we are talking late 60s/early 70s there is one HUGELY obvious implication of Kool Aid? What are people saying, that Cooper was on LSD when he did the hijack?? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Did we have any previous posts about this club?? Did the FBI talk to them?? Per conversations I had with retired FBI - this group was one of the first they looked at and interviewed. That is why I had tried to make contact before I ever had a computer. It was one of the starting points. Thanks Jo. (Kind of what I would have expected, but judging from some of the posts on here you'd think the FBI never looked beyond providing an alibi to Mayfield ) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

uh... sure. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Did we have any previous posts about this club?? Did the FBI talk to them?? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

...name...? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Yeah but do the trains run on time? Saudi isn't a democracy. It works like China: keep people fed and feeling well off and you hope they won't revolt. In the words of the immortal Bob, a hungry mon is an angry mon. edited to add: i'd rather pay tax. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Well, maybe not the forum Snow, but YOU found something while participating in the forum that bears further scrutiny. Why dont you post the particulars about your intriguing suspect including the words he wrote in a book about freezing feet while walking along the Columbia River? I don't think the FBI ever had this guy in their sights and he is an AMAZING match on a number of fronts including: Former Boeing employee in tech documentation Skydiver with night jump experience Viet Nam experience including civilian jumping and witnesssing atrocities by the US military USMC combat vet OUS resident at time of Norjack residing in VERY obscure place Resembles the FBI drawing Has a HUGE grudge USFS Smoke Jumper who worked in the Northwest. Need I go on? Even if he isnt Cooper just finding him teaches us a lot about investigation techniques and how people (like me and the FBI) miss things. How did you do it? How did I miss this guy while doing similar searches? This guy is old. He probably isnt Cooper but he might be. Even if he isn't I'll bet he knows what was known among jumpers and others in SE Asia about those Air America 727 jumps. Let's find Bruce and get him to interview this guy while he is still living. 377 +1 (I added the bolds except for the first) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

by the way, on the subject of gorillas, have any of you heard about our (sadly now deceased) famous crime-fighting gorilla, Max? I bet if he had been around Cooper wouldn't have got away. http://home.intekom.com/animals/services/news/wildlife/heromax.html (Edit: Max survived the operation fine, died a few years later of natural causes) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Oh, stop talking crap Jo. Firstly: Are you so far gone that you cannot actually believe that the quality of being 'objective' means all angles are considered, and people are not going to discount something that may in some vague way tally with something you once said (or hinted at, or claimed to have proof that *poof*ed, or whatever) Secondly: What Georger said was not at all out of line with what has been discussed before. Perhaps you were so focussed on Duane that you ignored a whole bunch of other posts. Your logic is staggering. By extension you might say... if we contend (as we have) Cooper wiped his fingerprints, it must be Duane! It substantiates what you said! (actually you said that a lot more recently., but it's already been pointed out a few times that your duane story seems to twist and shimmer to fit other speculations) Thirdly: it never ceases to amaze me how egotistical you must be to think that Georger spends all this time - and he HAS posted a lot of useful, substantive and researched stuff as well - just to 'discredit' you. And sorry to say but if discrediting you was anyone's aim, no-one has managed to do it nearly as well as you have done yourself. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Snow... in one argumentative mood?! Surely the point was obvious? to me anyway - that people would focus on what it was important for them to focus on at the time, and that could easily mean missing other stuff, even if it should have been 'obvious'. in other words, your 'extraneous detail' might very well have been -- what cooper looked like and perhaps more importantly exactly what he carried on to the plane. You didn't need photo ID in those days to travel. The ticket clerk would have been more interested in checking if Cooper's - probably handwritten - ticket was correct. All the stuff was more labour intensive in those days - no tap tap tap computer printout barcode swipe all done. He would have been concentraing on his ticketing duties. Not checking his face or clothing. Cooper could have been wearing make-up or a wig and he may not have noticed. Similarly the other eyewitnesses on the plane. Someone a while ago already showed how some eyewitness testimony in the case changed over the years to start including stuff that had been publicised. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Very interesting, Sluggo! Also re what I said before: I was very surprised that the person at the check-in counter seemed to recall Cooper so well. Why would he have taken any special notice of just another passenger? Clearly the stews would have had good reason to take good notice, on the other hand. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Aren't those lyrics from Helter Skelter by the Beatles? Charlie Manson really screwed up by having his gang paint Helter Skelter on the walls at the Tate La Bianca murder site. He wanted it to look like Blacks had killed them and hoped it would start a race war. Beatles were a bad pick if that's what he was trying to do. I never thought about the skydiving interpretation of those lyrics. It does seem to be a good fit. John Lennon took Ranger training in the same class with Duane. Why do you think the FBI had such a big file on a rock star? 377 you ever listened to "Rattle and Hum"? This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles - we're stealing it back. edit: you people in the US do know what a helter skelter is - not sure if you use the same term in the US? Those FOIA files show a HUGE amount of stuff on various people in the entertainment industry, and not just in the McCarthy era... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.