snowmman

(this carabiner discussion seems so out there I don't know why I'm posting, but what the heck) Come on. You guys go into the weeds so quickly. You can't look at modern carabiner shapes and brainstorm about the shapes common in 1971. You have to look at carabiner styles that were available/used in 1971. By far, the most likely shape was the standard oval. Plenty big and would have easily clipped over even 2" webbing. It's only in the last 20 years or so that a wider variety of shapes have become more available, more so in the last 10. (although some non-oval were available in 1971). I'm not sure if even simple D-shapes were in use in 1971. Now there are a lot of D shackles that screw on and would serve the trick. There is one interesting thing to think about, though. Cooper asked for a knapsack. What was his plan for carrying it? The other hijackers didn't seem to bring any gear with them to attach the money etc to themselves. Not sure why Cooper would be different. But he could have brought something for that? But maybe not. Also, why would he be thinking he'd have to worry about D-rings for the reserve? If he asked for chest packs, wouldn't he just be assume the back rigs would come with D-rings? If he was worried about getting emergency rigs and brought carabiners or snaplinks, a carabiner wouldn't be the safest bet (they're weak across the gate, and the chaos of a jump might not guarantee loading in the one strong direction (lengthwise). Cooper did have a knife? That could indicate outdoor or military, but just as likely mean nothing special. He was comfortable cutting cord and tieing knots?

that detailed 727 drawing shows 15 "interior service lights" on the ventral airstairs. That explains why the picture sluggo has at his site is all lit up. I thought those lights were added for the camera, but apparently they are normal? I don't know if by specifying "cabin lights off" if Cooper didn't get his stair lights. Might have been nice to have stair lights on. Attached a snap of the drawing of the airstair showing the bottommost step, and the strut attach to the airstair.

georger said: "then it may have been air pressure which gave Cooper trouble getting the stairs out ... with no weight on them?" Yes, they were dead easy to open. The placard was there for easy emergency use. Just one pull! I think Ckret had this underlying idea of complexity. But there was no technical complexity. The only "problem" was that they wouldn't go down because of the wind. Did cooper think hydraulics would push down? don't know.

"The stair struts are stress to bear both tensile and compressive loads" That sentence from the article explains why the stairs can act as a tail stand? (compressive load stress) (edit) Georger said: " Im not convinced the hydraulic pistons on these stairs did any work at all other than stabilisation. " Just to belabor the point: Apparently what you see aren't the hydraulic pistons. They are the struts. Hydraulics aren't visible.

georger said: "well... the reason for my 'musings' is you havent explained HOW in a hydraulic system, the stairs can drop like a rock or swing shut like a leaf - The Ckret slam effect. When you explain this then I will stop musing." I think my post above answers it. The links are sufficient for finding the source pages if you want. The article is 13 pages. One page is out of order there. One page is missing too. (edit) look at the linkages. It's not like the hydraulic arms that you see on things like pickup truck cabs, or minivan overhead doors etc. The struts are separate from the hydraulic. (edit) I still suspect there's some bleeding of the hydraulic that allows the drop. Or the hydraulic is released after the door is locked, allowing the struts to pivot down when unlocked.

Georger. some more detail on bathroom and stairs. I have a detailed picture of the hydraulic. remember the photo of the aft door, where I said it included the bathroom but I wasn't sure which side was the bathroom. it looks like 727's might have typically had two bathrooms in back? one on each side? this pic attached is from an excellent 727 article in the May '63 issue of Flight International ..the full article is available online starting on this page http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1963/1963%20-%200703.html I think this is a different technical article than I posted about before. Great tidbits of info "The search for the optimum high-lift wing was a natural extension of the programme already undertaken to improve the field performance of the 707. ....At one time there were 41 Boeing engineers engaged solely in the laying out of different flap configurations. Several hundred arrangements were investigated..." also note "The stairs consist of an upper fixed portion and a lower section hinged about it's upper (forward) end and retracted upwards by a hydraulic jack which breaks the support struts. Stair operation can be controlled from the head of the stairway or thefrom the ground, and in the absence of the hydraulic power manual pumping may be used for raising and gravity for lowering. The stair struts are stress to bear both tensile and compressive loads" The detail here is incredible (figures) http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1963/1963%20-%200707.html Attached is a snap of the development timeline To give you an idea of how cool the article is, I also attached a snap of a two page 727 centerfold from it. too small to read here. In the airstair hydraulic detail, (40) is "Airstair actuator and pogo-stick linkage (detail shown retracted) (41) is "Airstair down-lock" (38) is "Ventral Airstair" Here's the new info: Those vertical arms are not hydraulics. See the picture for where the hydraulic is. Interesting! You can see how it drops now! All questions resolved, I think! I have the whole article in a single pdf (5.2MB) because that site is slow and individual pages, but don't have a good place to post it.

georger has mused about cables-only. http://www.boeing.com/commercial/airports/arff/arff727.pdf reference page 1 of this. it's oct 31, 2007 from boeing. It's similar to the netherlands paper. It shows "airstair hydraulic accumulator" and "airstair hydraulic reservoir" labels on the plane figure. I can search some more, but I think we already covered the hydraulic detail for the airstair. It's not just a passive damping system like you propose.

If Cooper was just a regular guy who had seen 727 stairs and the hydraulic arm, I would think you'd assume that hydraulics would both raise the stairs (he might have seen the stairs raise), and also lower the stairs. ..i.e. push down. If you knew the hydraulics DIDN"T push the stairs down, you might be worried about air pressure keeping the stairs closed, no matter what you did. SO: did Cooper not know that the stair drop was weight only (free fall). You could intrepret his conversations about the stairs, as not understanding that the hydraulics don't push down. I guess this is obvious and we've touched on it before a little, but just wanted to focus thoughts on possibly that simple misunderstanding. We've used words like "deploy" and "extended" on the stairs, but I've now realized we had no common understanding of what those words really meant. (edit) it's also interesting that there's a question about whether the stairs "lock down" when fully down, differently on 727-100 vs 727-200 model. The manual I posted also says some weird stuff about standing on the stairs and yanking on the rails or something, to fully lock them down. The "locking" behavior is interesting in understanding whether the stairs serve as a tail stand. I posted a bunch of stuff where sometimes it is used as a tail stand. But the main thing: the hydraulics seem to turn themselves off automatically? i.e. you can't stop lifting halfway? It you could that would have been a way to get a half-extension. Let it drop all the way before takeoff, then lift halfway. I don't have something that says you can't "just lift halfway"...but I think the info points that way.

No there's no manual pushing back up. (short people wouldn't be able to reach anyhow..it's around 7' to the highest skin there at the stair closure, right?) Didn't anyone look at the vid I posted? You can see the hydraulic lift. (edit) and the external control position, which matches what's described in that manual I posted. Here's the youtube link again (I provided snaps from this) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjXB1Y9kISg you push the button on the outside (or the inside) and the hydraulics lift up. (yes you could ask "why didn't they just lift them themselves, from the inside? Maybe they wanted maint to inspect them since they had dragged?) Yes it is weird that the hydraulics don't provide any (or not much) back pressure on the drop, but can lift on the raise. The hydraulic arm must extend on the drop, so it can compress on the lift, so there's got to be some friction effects, minimally. So somehow this extension must occur with little resistance. Maybe there's just some kind of fast bleed for the hydraulics that allow the drop. I don't really understand typical hydraulics enough. If you've operated a hydraulic car engine hoist crane, or a hydraulic car jack, you know you can twist the bleed screw and the hydraulic arm drops pretty quick if there's any load. So maybe it's just that simple. There's some kind of bleed on the drop. (edit) or it's bled immediately after it's locked. That sounds more likely?

this has already been beat to death. people said DC-9 and 727 jumped. stairs removed in both cases. No one has jumped from stairs. (movable stairs). There were pics posted of the 727 exit (the one with duct tape on the seams of the panels?), but there's nothing interesting to see there. No stairs.

we as in me and Cooper. He keeps telling me that we can find the rest of the money. I have to improve my Photoshop skills. There's actually software that will help you rotate a 2d face/head to match a new angle. attached picture was found in a 1971 phone book from New Jersey. There was some water damage so the image is distorted.

We've assumed this model of river drift, that says that 100 bundles deposited in the Columbia would disperse randomly. However, it's interesting that the Columbia main current would be shifting from left bank (S bank) to right bank (N bank) before Tena Bar, because of the big curve there. That's what apparently happens when rivers meander. I've posted before on oil spills from down further, ending up on Frenchman's Bar, which makes sense also. In any case, here's some interesting info about random drifting things. I was looking at the stuff they've done studying that big load of rubber duckies that spilled in the ocean in 1992. They've tracked them all over the world since then (thousands) Well these guys dumped a determined number of bottles across random places in the oceans, with notes inside, to track drift. They dumped 15,000 bottles, and got a 4% return rate. They have some stories that are interesting, in terms of bottles travelling a long way, and ending up in the same place: "Hooper Bay must be a drift bottle magnet. Reports of more than fifty bottles have been received from this area, all washed ashore from the same drop location, roughly 200 kilometers away." "Bob Funk's pair of bottles washed up in Yakutat Bay only 20 feet apart from each other and were found September 7th, 2000" http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/SCI/osap/projects/driftbottle/intro_e.htm

from my post about the crew that had their stairs drop and not notice and were dragging it behind them (on ice) "The WX in the northeast had been bitterly cold -- record low temperatures. The ramp was covered with a layer of compacted snow and ice. The 'aft airstair' unlocked light on our b- 727 had been deferred by maintenance" So: I think it's probably true that the stuff about the light indicating the stairs were "fully extended" is wrong. I'm not sure though where I got that "fully extended" thing from. I guess the transcripts do mention a light early on. I'm not sure how we interpreted that as fully extended. (edit) we had speculated thru this before. just reviewing I guess and synchronizing with the latest stuff I posted.

Jo said "Regarding the aftstairs - the opening that comes down doesn't go all the way to the ground - there are a few steps that extend past the edge of that...I don't understand all the technical talk. These steps be it 2 or 3 or 4 or what come down out of the stairwell to the ground...they extend I guess is the word I am looking for...when the stairwell goes back up they collapse back into the stairwell so the don't damage the stairwell opening." Well Jo that's what I assumed at first also. But there's no picture that shows that. It just seems like a wrong idea? (edit) Jo: MD-88's are different. You may be thinking of MD-88's? I posted snaps from the 727 video even. (of the stair raising) here they are again. I've added sluggo's airstair photo, so you can clearly see the round "skin" impacting the tarmac. There are no extra steps like you're suggesting. Where did you get that info from? Here's another thing. We never got it settled what it actually meant when they said a light indicated the stairs were fully extended. The implication was that Cooper could be ready to jump. But I'm thinking that's not what the light meant. (I guess we all just assumed that's true). But we should get the tech detail on what lights are in the cockpit related to the aft stairs and door. Maybe there's just a light for the aft door? I think there's an alarm light for any door unlocked. (edit) since the stair instructions mention standing on the stairs and giving them a yank to help "lock" them, and they drop in freefall to ground that might be dirt? I'm guessing there is no light for "fully extended" because that's a fuzzily defined condition. Maybe for "stairs unlocked" instead. Did that story about the stairs dropping and the pilots not noticing talk about a misfunctioning light? I'll check.

playing with the b/w LIFE sketch photo. Browned it to match skin tone better, and got rid of the cheap suit. Gives a little different feel to the sketch. I think the shirt collar and narrow tie tends to fatten the appearance of his lower face in the original sketch?

Ckret had posted this about the bathroom. I just noticed that the passengers were still on board when he was in the bathroom. Of course he would bring the briefcase. But I just noticed that he took the bag also. I hadn't realized that. Wouldn't that mean the bag had something important? Either he didn't want someone to take it, or he was going to use it in the bathroom? Interesting. Ckret said: "He was in the bathroom for a "few minutes" whatever that means. He took his briefcase and bag with him. He looked no different when he came out; maybe a half pound lighter. Yes, the bathroom was processed. The crew did not try to leave the plane, at this time the passengers were still onboard."

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/airports/arff/arff727.pdf is a shorter version of similar info from Boeing. Not as much stair detail. dates 10/31/2007 I wondering if Boeing removed some info on purpose? Hey I just noticed that the figure drawing in that page17 jpg I posted is accurate for step count. It seems to align with the number of steps in the photos. For an an emergency exit, it kind of makes sense that they would design it so no hydraulics are needed? in case the hydraulic system failed in the accident..? Maybe that's why it seems odd. (edit) Never been to Netherlands. Germany yes. Beautiful. Never been to Africa.

Hi Jo, I've posted pics, video, and now figures and descriptions. The video doesn't show any behavior like what you're trying to describe (it's showing the stairs being raised) The thing you're calling the extension is the moving door that shuts against the plane. The fixed part is up inside the plane. That's all there is, except for the aft door which I've also posted pics of. I've posted pics of stairs from the outside, and from the inside looking down. I can't think of anything I've not posted. Your description doesn't seem to align with any of that. There is no manual "variable" control from what I can tell. You can initiate the lifting with a button, apparently, that triggers the hydraulics?. The manual pages I posted have levers that initiate the drop from either inside or outside. There is no extension of anything that comes out of the belly. Unless you're talking about the pivoting "door/stairs" There's just the thing that pivots down. There is no "two phase" thing. The average distance of the cabin floor to ground, with wheels extended, is 9 feet 1 inch. I've not counted the stairs, (edit) I went and looked at pics after typing that, and counted the stairs. Let's look at the probable riser heights for each stair (they all should be equal otherwise that's also a tripping hazard...residential codes have a tolerance that's pretty small: ( 3/16" adjacent, 3/8" between any?) People get used to an expected riser height on stairs. Local codes for buildings might limit it to < 8-1/4" or 7-3/4" in. 7 to 7-1/2" is typical. I think I count 15 or 16 steps total. To get a 9 feet 1 inch vertical height, each riser would be 109/15 = 7.26" so that's about right for meeting what people expect to avoid tripping. In fact I just noticed looking at a pic, that the fixed stairs are wider on either side than the pivoting stairs. It looks like there are 4 fixed steps, and then 11 or 12 on the pivoting part. (12 if you count the ground) Short answer Jo: I think your understanding of the stair operations is not correct? (edit) that manual I posted say avg. 9ft 1" from cabin floor to ground with wheels extended. The cabin floor is a bit above the lower outside skin. basically the fixed stairs cover the vertical distance from skin to cabin floor.

as we've discussed, there are a number of details a 727 hijacker should be aware of. I just found this set of class notes that neatly summarizes knowledge that might be important :) Curiously, there are from the Netherlands. Now Orange1 may disavow any connection, but then why would she be hiding in Africa? http://www.brandweerschiphol.nl/instructie/vliegtuigen/boeing/boeing_727_01.pdf page 16 has the external stair operation instructions, as well as the internal (snap attached) It mentions the stairs being locked into place. on internal operation it says "...stairs will freefall into position (see attached) page 17 has some nice figures showing where everything is. Also warns to "stay clear of falling stairs" when opening? (edit) from the other post, it seems like there might be some cable stuff, along with the hydraulics? Maybe the cables are part of the "slow lower" mechanism.

here's a report from the NASA event gathering system (online) It's interesting because it confirms the stairs can fall down. There was "wear" here, don't know how much that contributed, or if that was just part of the not-locked thing, and they would always fall down. (From everything we know, it seems like they would always fall down) http://www.37000feet.com/report/262304 jan 1994 B-727 freighter operated with a misdiagnosis on the inoperative aft stair light warning system. The WX in the northeast had been bitterly cold -- record low temperatures. The ramp was covered with a layer of compacted snow and ice. The 'aft airstair' unlocked light on our b- 727 had been deferred by maintenance. So, besides the normal verification from the mechanic that the stairs were up and locked, we had no indication that the stairs might be unlocked, i.e., the unlocked light was illuminated. During the pushback at ewr the mechanic saw the stairs come unlocked and fall down. The push was stopped temporarily. Because the ramp was icy, the stairs slid easily and no damage resulted. The mechanic reclosed and locked the stairs up. The push continued and we departed for roc. The flight was uneventful. After landing on runway 22 we taxied northeast on taxiway B. Ground control at roc asked us if we knew we were dragging our aft stairs. Obviously, we didn't know and immediately stopped taxiing. We called our maintenance in roc. They came out, put the stairs back up and followed us to the gate to ensure that the stairs remained up. The mechanic said he found ice on some control cables, broke them free and now 'all was well.' the captain prudently decided that additional trouble-shooting was indicated. We went into crew rest. That evening we showed to fly roc to dtw to ewr. Maintenance had found the stair operating mechanism worn. The stairs were secured up and inoperative. The 2 legs were flown uneventfully. Another fine' murphian' example.

I was reading about the use of tail stands to prevent tipups like the photo I posted, on 727s and other airplanes at: http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/221344/ And found this interesting post. Flight 305 was a 727-051 right, so I guess it had non-locking airstairs like we've been told? Here they're talking about tail support, so they're not talking about Cooper Vane issues. "I thought common procedure on 727's was to lower the rear air stair for tail support. Is this assembly normally removed during the cargo conversion?" "When we operated them; our -100's did not have a tail stand, but our -200's did. I always thought it a little strange, because on the -100, the tail stairs did not lock down, but on the -200, they did." Another post confirming standard procedure to drop the stairs (of course we're not talking 1971) "You are correct at least when I worked at nwa when we had the 727 you always dropped the aft airstairs after arrival for just that purpose. FedEx has the airstairs but also has tailstands in their 727's.." But then at DHL "I have seen Amerijet use the aft stairs as a kind of tail stand. We at DHL, are forbidden to use the stairs as a tail stand, we have tailstands on the B727 and on the A300 we hold the nose with a tether as a means to hold the nose to the ground."

well there's vastly more detailed info on the web. And with some photoflash capacitors, and a small 9v battery, you probably wouldn't even need a dc-dc converter. So maybe if Cooper really wanted a detonator back then, he could have done something you couldn't even had seen..but that wouldn't have been so impressive? His use of a large battery may have been part of his "good show" thinking? in terms of airplane security: The only safety that really exists is making sure that it takes a certain physical size of explosive to down a plane. And it's possible to screen/protect against that amount of explosive. Once things are physically small, it's basically impossible to protect against them. I mean, the basic detonator stuff can be incredibly small nowadays. Luckily, a small amount of explosives isn't the worst thing in the world. I mean it's real simple: if you look at the technologies available in the world today (somewhere), and you look at an airplane..well you have to say airplanes are unsafe, since they can be caused to crash, by an individual, with relatively small disturbances. So are cars. Trains too. So what's the problem? That assholes exist? That planes are weak technology? That 250 million guns exist in the US? That countries sell military explosives? It's just a combination of all that. We are what we are. There is no "security thru obscurity" argument that works nowadays. Trying to restrict knowledge doesn't work. Atomic proliferation control, thru trying to control information, hasn't worked, obviously. Here's an interesting vid of what happens nowdays if a hijacker is violent (3 passengers had been killed before this storming) 1994. France. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzYJ4By7sjo i.e. they don't care about the plane anymore. grenades, bombs, shooting. etc.

responding to georger's comments: "Here, dynamite sticks are not red, but ochre. The sticks in his briefcase were red. Road flares are red." I posted an assortment of dynamite wrappers before. Some are red. In Oregon there's a lot of dynamite for logging. Dupont made some special just for loggers. That was brown. Brown dynamite still gets found in Oregon. So yeah, red is likely not dynamite, but could be. "There was also something about the size and shape of the sticks, something about the apparent lack of fuses. Something about the type of battery having enough voltage to set dynamite fuses off. No apparent switch for the bomb." We talked about the length and width of the standard dynamite stick before. You wouldn't be able to see the blasting cap on a quick glance. However the issue of battery voltage (without a dc-dc convertor+capacitor) would be an issue. Blasting caps are triggered by current (well specified range with some variance depending on the blasting cap). You need a certain voltage to get the required current. If you hook more blasting caps up, you need more voltage. DC-DC converter would be pretty easy to have nowadays. A little harder, electronics-wise in 1971. However note: The large size of the dry cell, which gives it the ability to deliver a lot of current, is exactly what you want for blasting caps: the ability to deliver a lot of current. So 1.5V to a blasting cap might have worked. You wouldn't want to test it. (the blasting caps have variance. Some might work) In short, a single dry cell, which was likely 1.5V from the description is very marginal for getting a blasting cap to go. 3V is more like a minimum. I think 6V is what military manuals might talk about more. "He had the briefcase OPEN showing Tina the bomb briefly and said 'all he had to do was touch these two wires together' and the bomb would go off." I've read that in a couple of places and always wondered if that was true. Don't know. "OPEN the briefcase to set the bomb off? No outside switch? He kept the briefcase closed the rest of the time! (How is he going to set the bomb off if rushed and cant get the case open in time?)" There was another hijack where the guy had his fake bomb in a paper bag that he showed to the crew. He had a timer (clock) in there. I thought "that's smart, showing a detonator"...but it's obviously stupid, because you don't want a delayed trigger if you're using a bomb as a weapon in a hijack. You want it to go off now, if necessary.

that's exactly what I was thinking. But if that is true, you would think the stairs wouldn't pop back up quickly either, like in the test drop for the pressure bump. Unless there was some kind of sliding pivot point or something. I can't imagine how the mechanical design was so that it could lift hydraulically..but then also be able to be pushed up by wind in flight...I guess some kind of sliding pivot point maybe for the hydraulics? but if there's a sliding pivot or something, then I would think it would allow the ramp to drop as fast as it could bump up too? And if it drops, it whacks the tarmac. It'd be nice to find a video of the rear stairs coming down as well as going open, to see what happens. The stairs are complicated 1) They get raised by hydraulics 2) They supposedly drop by gravity somehow 3) They can bump up when unweighted by Cooper, and almost close 4) They can hang open halfway in flight (the braniff pics) 5) They somehow need to lower without smashing against the tarmac, because the part that touches the tarmac forms the outer skin and doesn't want to be damaged?

that's actually a very amazing story. 7 people arrested altogether. Largest domestic bomb until the WTC 1993 bombing. John Birges 1980 bomb had at least 8 trigger mechanisms. 850 lbs of dynamite disguised as a copy machine. Harvey's Resort hotel ransom note left with the delivery demanded $3 million two steel boxes, one on top of another. bottom box had most of the explosives. smaller top box had 8 switches. 1200 lbs (400 lbs of steel) apparently even a toilet float that was rigged to trigger if the bomb was dunked in water. The bomb blew when they tried to deactivate it. nobody killed. day after, John Jr. given a traffic ticket for speeding. CHP officer remembered him and his father. They tried to deliver the money via helicopter but couldn't find the people to deliver it to. Some said the ransom note had an error. Some say the strobe light that was supposed to signal the helicopter had a battery problem. dynamite was stolen from a hydroelectric project in Fresno. Dad was mad because he lost $1M supposedly to the casinos? He was a landscaper. Big landscaping business is where he got his money. Supposedly used his knowledge of sprinkler systems to build the bomb. It took him 3 weeks to build in his garage. Dad died in 1996. Two younger Birges refused to help. Dad had two laborers help move the bomb. (edit) a number of good articles online. summary and some pics here: http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20080828/NEWS/808289997