Orange1

Yes. We're not in disagreement. We just don't have numbers. For instance, it would be interesting to know if the fatality rate per # jumps, is constant regardless of years in the sport. by "jumps" I mean a total of all jumps done in a year, by everyone within a certain bin of skill level...D license holders do more jumps per year? (guess) so even if they have a higher representation in fatalities (from that SA paper), it doesn't mean that risk is skewed towards D jumpers. My guess is that the whole "thing" is adjusted so that risk is constant across skill levels. I think the adjustment happens to a water level of acceptable risk..i.e. how many deaths before people say "that's nuts...no one should do that any more" It's like driving cars. What's an acceptable # of deaths for the benefit/cost tradeoff? you should get some idea if you look at the fatality database, as I suggested..if you have the inclination to put all the data in excel. the 10% (adrenalin jinky)I referred to earlier came from a paper referenced here and elsewhere on risk behaviour, finding in sports such as skydiving and mountain climbing that most people do the sports in spite of, rather than because of, the risks. I tried to find it but evidently haven't come up with the right search term yet Anwyay, none of this probably has any bearing on Cooper. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

B-license in SA requires 75 jumps, but all licencses are not just jump numbers but various requirements (certain ability tests basically) as well as written tests. You don't get a b-license just by doing 50 or 75 solo jumps. fwiw i don't need special medical insurance to cover skydiving here, it is included in my normal one - they specify risk sports- #1 on their list of those is mountain biking. re experienced fatalities, did you read what i wrote earlier? bear in mind student gear is much safer (eg you can't stall a student canopy). yet you still have fatalities... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I agree and yes of course it happens in jumping too, just perhaps not as easily as some other risk sports -this is because skydivers need a plane to take them up and DZOs generally don't like fatalities at their DZs. People get turned away from DZs or grounded, i'm not sure how many other risk sports you would get similar sorts of restraints/constraints imposed. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Yes, it's coupled to the chances of you surviving the next time you make a jump.. I'm just a whuffo, so I can say this. But I think that belief that experience directly couples to survival, is just something you guys all believe in, otherwise you wouldn't keep doing it. I'm not sure if you guys keep a database with a consensus "cause" of every injury, that goes back a ways. I'd like to see the data on experience vs injury. My guess is that inexperience doesn't couple as closely as you'd like. Usually it's because the "thing" that gets done doesn't stay static..i.e. as you get more experience, you have to change the "thing" so the buzz stays the same. Maybe I'm generalizing only for some. There's a little bit of the drug addict idea of chasing the same initial high. It takes discipline I guess to not go too far. It's possible the risk gets dialed in so it's constant for an entire career? Dunno. Well, you may be able to get some stats if you care to sift through all the fatality reports in the incidents forum (which include jump numbers and often comments on currency). There seem to be 2 main types of injury/death in incidents. One is a positive correlation with experience, where highly experienced jumpers perhaps push the envelope or get complacent (or are just flying gear and doing maneouvers that are completely unforgiving of any mistake). The other is inexperience - either low jump numbers (less than a few hundred) OR inexperience in a particular discipline eg swooping, wingsuiting, because inexperience means you cannot always react as fast or as correctly as you need to in a given situation. Other skydivers feel free to correct me, but this is my impression - the 500-1000 jump jumper hurting himself on a "normal" skydive does happen, but it's fairly rare. Your "drug addict" (adrenalin addict?) analogy probably only deals with about 10% of the people in the sport. Yes there is research on this, somewhere... most skydivers do it for the challenge/feel of flying/whatever not to to try keep on with adrenalin rushes. Lots of experience would presuppose (at least at some stage) decent currency. Currency rules didn't just happen because someone once thought it was a good idea. They became part of the Basic Safety Requirements (BSRs) for a reason. As is mentioned a number of times in other forums, particularly S&T and Incidents - the BSRs were written in blood. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I should have added : OR he could have got night jump experience in the military... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Thanks for the clarification - PASA requires solo night jumps for the C (FS ones for D), I assumed USPA was the same...my bad! logging requirements for a B or actually having the B doesn't really matter in this context - the point being re the jumps that have to be done. Do any of you oldtimers have a copy of what the rules were in the 60s? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Hope I am not missing your point again. IF you are looking at a hijacker with night jump experience, then currency requirements are important to allow you to advance in your jumping to be able to do a night jump. If he had done all this 12 years prior to the hijack, or you don't care about night jumps, then sure currency in 71 isn't an issue. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Yes, it's coupled to the chances of you surviving the next time you make a jump. Judging by now, I'd guess it ebbs when oil prices rise. But as the Cooper hijacking happened very soon after Nixon lost the gold standard - i.e. just after an era of stable/fixed commodity prices - that probably would not have been a factor in 62-71. Other things might have of course . You got thos quotes from a Poynter book right - maybe you can try emailing him to see if he has annual data, or mailing USPA itself? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Oh really? I'm sure Ckret - and everyone else here - would love to see proof of what you originally came onto this site to prove. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

re regular active jumpers -- unless rules have changed a lot here (old timers please help) skydiving has "currency" requirements - minimum jumps that need to be made to avoid having to repeat training, etc. if (IF) you are looking for someone that had night jump experience, i.e. B-license or higher, it is likely that at least until the point he did the hijack he was a reasonably regular jumper. of course, if you are simply looking for someone who did a jump or 2 and then took a chance, sure you don't need to be looking at active jumpers or even at PCA/USPA members. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Night jumps are required for C-license, and if USPA follows same rules as my association you are not allowed to do night jumps without a B-license. iow if you are looking for USPA/PCA member he would have had to have B-lic to (legally) have done night jumps before. Not sure how many jumps were required for C-license in those days (jump # requirements for licenses have increased over the years)? Nice digging on USPA/PCA numbers. Bear in mind that membership is always wider than regular active jumpers, though by what margin I have no idea. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

God Jo your bias is so clear. Ckret already posted before he could find no record of the registration being taken and was open enough to admit that didn't necessarily mean it hadn't, just that he could find no record of it. For someone who keeps sniping at people who ask questions that have been answered already, you do a very good job of doing the same. Then again you clearly won't be happy till the FBI starts acting as your personal PI agency and/or tells you that Duane was Cooper. I'm guessing neither will happen though. And especially fter all the time Ckret has wasted on you, his civil and polite responses put yours to shame. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Goggles No-one knows for sure he didn't have any. They could have been in an inside pocket of his coat, they could have been in the mysterious paper bag he had (along with an alti?) We have no way of knowing whether or not he had goggles, so it is impossible to draw any conclusions about anything from something you don't know. (Although I realise trying to draw conclusions without knowing anything is largely what is keeping this thread alive. That, and the secret hand of the Freemasons.) Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

You left out the Masonic (Order of the Amaranth) connection and the specific issues raised by the Bay of Pigs and MLK assassination... Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Yes it is, under the FOIA files on Cooper. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

You're not wrong - on that - but you do seem to be shifting the goalposts... from when you originally stated you didn't think the community was an "everyone knows everyone" type. Seems to me you said one thing but thought you were making a point on something else! Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

ignore the thread title and read through the posts, & have a look at the pics.. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1433655;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

That makes absolutely no sense. I'm a whuffo, and it's all I can do to not get booted from a DB Cooper thread. There is no way I would post to any other thread at DZ.com. I did once purely by accident. Nope. I can see that it's right to be in a box here. Hey if you're a jumper, why don't you? Snow, I didn't say "post", I said "have a look"! Why are you being so argumentative?? You said there is no evidence that the community was small; I simply pointed you to some. If there is a specific question you want asked, maybe you can browse some of the other threads and PM one of the posters who looks like they might have been in the area at the time? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I must have missed that. Could you refer me to the relevant post with such proof please? If it was true, I'd get a response to the following: Hey out there in DZ land: you guys know anyone who was on those C-47 loads with the Saigon Sport Parachute Club in the late '60s? or Hey out there in DZ land: who else was jumping at that civilian club at Clark Air Base back in the '60s...remember that crazy shit we did? or Who the heck was that guy that jumped with Seattle Skydivers in '63. you remember him? remember the rig he used? or fuck...remember the old 1929 Travelair at Issaquah. I loved it! I'll await a response. Maybe you should have a look at the rest of the threads in this forum and not just the DB Cooper one... there are plenty along those lines. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

I must have missed that. Could you refer me to the relevant post with such proof please? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Yes, but this may have been less of an issue for a jumper with military experience than one known to the sport community? You're saying Cooper got freefall experience in the military? I don't think that makes sense given his age. Or are you saying he got static-line jump experience and went with that? He may have been WWII military that got into sport jumping for some reason. But I don't see why saying "just military" solves anything. If he was so gungho military that he'd be freefalling in the military as part of the job, I think there would be different personality/behavior issues than what Cooper displayed? (biased speculation by me) I asked before how many mil. jumpers may have had HALO experience in that time frame but got no answers. Military - more tight-knit, perhaps less of a feeling that someone would turn criminal esp from an elite unit, doesn't "solve" everything but makes it perhaps less likely. That was all I was saying. I don't get your "gung ho" aspect. HALO jumpers, even "ordinary" paratroopers, AFAIK have always been highly trained elite units. Your note about "personality issues" does indeed I think show a huge bias. Being "gung ho" about being in the military at that time - for someone who grew up in the WW2/immediate post WW2 era - in an era where there was almost universal acknowldgement that the US saved the world from the Nazis/fascists - would have been very different to what it is now. If he only had SL experience, I have raised that as well - makes it more likely he opened at exit with all the likely negative outcomes from that that have already been discussed. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

Yes, but this may have been less of an issue for a jumper with military experience than one known to the sport community? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

That is very interesting, and imo an important addition to the "what happened in 1971" list. Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

OMG. Well I suppose it was just a matter of time before the Masonic (Templar/Rosicrucian etc) aspect made its way into this grand conspiracy theory. The only thing still left out is Roswell? Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.