lodestar

Hmmm Godziller, You obviously werent' around Z-hills when I was or you wouldn't make a statement like that.......hahahahahaha

Put me on the list to own one of those lil buggers! I would put real money up that that thing would take off straight slap up, yep, vertical.........lol.... Gotta be a superb little jump ship, a good workhorse for anything under 12,500 with those stubby wings, full length flaps and power to spare..... Think I'll get a red/white/blue combo paint job with stars.......hahahaha

Hey Doogie, I did some flying for Bill Smith , at a little dirt field, I seem to remember one runway, near Baldwin florida. You had to clear each lift with Cecil Field which was then active with training for the navy. don't remember how long it lasted but the difficulty of clearing with cecil field was a giant PIA so it likely was not in operation for long. I do remember some activity at the Saint Augustine airport, one packing table, and half a dozen guys on a good weekend. I used the same packing table to pack some of the aerobatic pilots rigs there and in nearby airports.

ParaPonderosa, Bong AFB(closed) near Kenosha Wisconsin. Aero Park (Wisconsin Sky Divers) Franklin, Wisconsin Rainbow Airport, southeastern Wisconsin(Milwaukee Skydivers?) Bill Hasenfuss's airport, Omro Wisconsin (Oskosh)

Funny thing though, it seems a few of the pirates who got the ransome and boogied in a fastboat were found floating, dead, in the ocean near the boat. Opinions vary but news stated there may have been a large wave..... Hmmmmm Now, lets see......six guys, three million, half mil each, right, three guys, three mil, one mill each....wanna bet those guys have good math skills and weapons?

I'm not exactly sure but i'd go with the wolf spider ident. They will grow to an amazing size but these looked like babies or young'uns. Cute little guys..... They eat cockroaches by the numbers...

couldn't tell you what kind of canopy other than knowing it's a heavy drop cargo type. The white tubes were likely an attempt to bleed off high pressure air from inside the canopy to keep it from oscillating too violently. There appears to be some kind of packing crate underneath but no idea what's in that. Where on earth do you find these oddities Howard? You seem to have an inexaustable supply of them.

Aaaahhh shoot! All that screwing around for nothing...sorry, didn't know it was already posted...yes, howard, the guy with the surfboard and the crane!

Nope, not that old one howard....but go to my videos on youtube and look for the "extreme sports" video and have a look http://www.youtube.com/my_videos You will have to copy (ctrl c) and paste it in your search or address bar (ctrl v)

Try pasting this to your address bar and see how that goes, I'll do the same and get back to you. Extreem_S...wmv (1783.6 KB) No go on that way...doesn't work. I can email it to myself but can't get it to you all. Still trying....I'll figure it out soon.

Here's a little one I found while surfing. Hope it works. sorry, still trying to get it over to this frame.....give me a few minutes Well, it looks like the attachment is too large for a download....I'll work on some other way, sorry guys

I'd go with beerlight on that one, although the picture you posted is rather fuzzy on the belly, the other engines and tail configs are close to the Ilyushin in form. Illyushin IL-76

Correct me if i'm wrong but was there a sequence in the movie "gypsy moths" of wing flying? I'll have to dig my copy out and watch to see...i think there was. Hey Poppenhager, just wanted to say hello, you may remember me from the loft at zhills from 69 through 75 or so and I was flying the light aircraft on jump runs, 6472A and the 196...... Tuna

Just a byword, I heard on NPR this morning of a DB Cooper "reunion" party held in a small town in Washington state. Although I was busy at the same time, several sound bytes stuck in my mind, one was an interview with the current FBI agent in charge of the case who was basically non commital about the whole thing, and several "interviews" with attendees who expoused various theories on who, what , when and where but I hesitate to repeat those theories and further the "rumors" surrounding them. Just thought you all might want to know that.

Hey Cazmo, That picture looks an awful lot like the zhills packing shed, what was your dad's name? I may have still been at the hills that year and may know him.

I was reading the post about the history of parachuting and just happened to see the thoughts of No Phear: Anyone who asks: 'Why would you jump out a perfectly good airplane?' Has obviously never been to a drop zone.... and seen the plane. ©No_Phear 2001 It made me flash on a Jumper Paul Healy, a big fellah who used to jump at zhills. Paul was huge, weighed probably 350 lbs plus and was a favorite base for quite a few group jumps. He was a prodigious eater, I can remember going out to breakfast with him and being astounded at the huge breakfasts he would eat, and then, when everyone was through, he would ask everyone at the table if he could finish off the food they didn't want. But, I digress, as I came to find out, Paul was deathly afraid of riding the jump plane down. I found this out one day when we took off in very cloudy weather in the 182 with a load "looking for a sucker hole" or a break in the clouds so we could get enough altitude for a jump. We flew around for half an hour looking and were unsuccessful in getting enough altitude for even a hop and pop so I decided we needed to get back on the ground and quit wasting gas and turned around and told the guys I was going down. As I cut the throttle back and was coasting down when I felt this incredibly obvious shaking in the aircraft, I though maybe the engine had a bad cylinder, maybe the prop was dinged or some other huge imbalance was going on with the airframe. The shaking continued and had me baffled. I turned around to see if I could find anything wrong visually and at that time saw Paul, literally shaking in his boots, hanging on to the back of my seat, fear plastered all over his face, sweat pouring from his face shaking uncontrollably and an expression that left no doubt that he was deathly afraid of landing in the aircraft. We got back on the ground and paul was literally almost in shodk. He rolled out, crawled away from the aircraft on his hands and knees and collapsed about fifty feet from the plane. Other jumpers gathered around him while he recovered and got back to normal. Later on, we talked and he admitted he just didn't like to land and was deathly afraid of doing so. Bob Sprague and Paul became instant buddies when Bob showed up, Paul followed him around like a puppy, begging him to jump with him....they did and went on to become a rock hard base for a lot of skydives. I think Paul passed away some years ago from what I heard, a heart attack. Funny how you remember little things like that.

For some unknown reason the name John West popped into my head....does anyone know that name from zhills? Roger, Howard, Hoop? Sorry it was John Wells......not west....

Wish I could be there for thanksgiving, unfortunately I'm booked in a huge festival on the suwannee river that weekend.... Don't get down that way much anymore but usually stop in if I've got the time and inclination. A reunion would be a fun thing....might be nice to see everyones face once again..... Tuna

As a jump pilot, I've seen a bunch of those kinda malfo's....that kind of thing will definitely make your heart skip a beat or two...."thousand one, thousand two, thousand three, where the hell is opening shock, thousand four, thousan....aaaahhhhh.. Not to mention those low pullers who yank at 600 feet....now THATS pucker factor...... Tuna....

This may or may not be pertinent to your searching activities with the FBI but: I recently applied to four agencies for copies of any records they might have on file for me. All in accordance with the FIA guidelines. All four returned first, a notice that my requests had been recieved along with a case number for reference. All four, about a month later, replied that all records up to December, 1991 had been destroyed by those agencies and there was no information available. I still have to ask, how they figured out I wanted information pertaining to 1970-71, 72 and 73 since i did not request a particular year or years or, they had no records of me since then and assumed I requested years prior to 1991. In any event, it is likely that the records you seek from the FBI or other agencies like the NSA have been destroyed as well since the requests were made to both agencies in both washington dc and the Tampa Florida agencies.

Thanks Goldwing, You are likely correct on that one....time blurs the memory...I do know that I met him up in milwaukee and was trying to place the face of the "guy picking his nose" and it wasn't fitting correctly. If, in fact, jack wallace is the same guy i'm thinking of, he was a constant daily user of lsd, at the time I knew him he was taking 10-15 hits a day! Yes, a day....small wonder he may have been injured at work.....i know he used to carry baggies of drugs around with him all the time....ah well thanks for getting me on the right track, if anyone has his email i'd appreciate the steer. tuna

Roger, FYI, Dan Steiger aka "steely dan" lives here in saint augustine over on anastasia island. We were actually neighbors for a time and enjoyed many conversations about the hills. Far as I know he's still there, I moved out of town and haven't seen him in quite a while, maybe I should stop in and tell him about the DZ site. tuna

My guess would be european, possibly russian or german....odd looking things for sure....

Anyone remember if Jim Wallace was from milwaukee or chicago? I knew a Jim Wallace but don't remember where from and can't recall what he looked like. If anyone has a picture I would appreciate it. Thanks Tuna

Thanks for posting pat, although I don't really recognize either one of those guys....hell, I still look the same as I was 30 years ago.....I'm even sending you a current picture to prove it!!! Tuna