snowmman

"he wants the flaps down to 15, I think." Good highlight, Orange1. Maybe this was when 15 got introduced into the conversation. It got said (it was a reasonable technical opinion) and then everyone assumed Cooper had said 15. There was the stuff in Tosaw's book where the 15 request didn't come the first time Cooper said "flaps down". Supposedly Soderlind (who's not on the plane) got told it after he asked when he was calculating distance. Soderlind assumed they had probed Cooper again (my memory of Tosaw's account) but maybe they didn't. So maybe Cooper never did say 15. Someone said it, and then everyone (including Rat.) started assuming Cooper had said it? It's plausible I guess. Some of the communications with the cabin were direct by phone from Cooper to someone right? So if that someone said something, others might assume it came from Cooper. (edit) PAUL is likely Paul Soderlind. We've discussed him before. (edit) fixed misspelling of P.S. last name. (edit) FIXED a 2nd time. my memory was really bad. This is correct now. Search for "paul soderlind" posted by snowmman to get more background on him.

no it's fine. There is still a basic question: "MSP:IMPOSS TO TKOFF WITH STAIRS XTNDD BUT FULL UTXXX UP" What the heck does that mean? How can "XTNDD" be a property that exists even when the stairs are "FULL UP" it goes to my question if there are extra movable parts. I don't think there are. (re all the pics I provided) So it's confusing. I think maybe the people in the transcripts didn't know what they were talking about? (edit) See we've been fed the line, that Cooper didn't know much about the stairs. I wonder if a lot of the confusion was because they were arguing about the stairs without knowing everything about them. Cooper may have been the LEAST confused. I do believe the hydraulics seems to be a fire-and-forget thing..i.e. there's no intermediate position you can lift to. It's not like the lift for your car at a service station which goes as long as you hold the button. (I thought the video link I provided of the stairs lifting was useful) I still don't understand how the stairs are lowered in normal operation to the tarmac. If it's just gravity, what keeps the stairs from banging down and denting the outer shell? They must lower slowly. Is it just counterbalanced well? Who weights it if so? There must be some kind of thing that lowers it. If so, then I can't understand how it drops when Cooper steps on it (like the funny story I posted) and how it pops back up. How do the stairs get deployed on the ground?

yeah I just updated my post after I read the transcript. You editorialized. There is no "shut", for instance.

(edit) I've corrected this because georger typed the transcript wrong. He filled in his interpretation. it's from page 12 of the original transcripts. georger quoted from some transcript not sure which... these two things: "305: HE SEEMS TO BE INSISTENT WITH STAIRS IN 1 DEG" (NOTE: Assumption on what 1 DEG means here) Who proposed/said 1 degree first? Cooper? If he did that as part of the negotiation, does it betray a technical lean? "MSP:IMPOSS TO TKOFF WITH STAIRS XTNDD BUT FULL UTXXX UP Here again, I'm confused about "extended". My resolution of prior pics was that "extended" was the same as lowered. Now there's this introduction of "extended" preventing "full up" which is closed I guess? What is preventing the "full shut up" ? (WRONG transcript by georger. There is no "shut". The UTXXX is a typo of UP) Is there some piece that sticks out on "extended" ?? That's what I can't understand.

This little noodle of info was in a recent article about the floating feet washing up on shore (that we discussed before) Thought it was good to set a baseline expectation about the numbers (today). Note some are very old. Also: there's a prof that might have some insight about floating Cooper body. (his speciality is ocean, but he does hydraulic drift simulations?). He's been looking at the case of the seven feet found. Seattle Weekly, 12/9/08 [/url]http://www.seattleweekly.com/2008-12-10/news/where-the-feet-have-no-name/[/url] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "B.C. law enforcement has about 2,400 missing-persons cases on the books, and Washington 2,000. Many in both jurisdictions are cold cases dating back years, even decades. They include abducted children, the homeless, runaways, and those designated presumed dead/body not recovered. B.C.'s missing-person count is the highest of any Canadian province, " ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Actually, with the seventh foot, what's coming up now are some answers, says former University of Washington oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer, Ph.D., known as Dr. Duck to the rapt audience of schoolkids he lectures on flotsam, jetsam, and buoyant body parts." "Over coffee at the Varsity Restaurant in Ravenna, Ebbesmeyer seems to brighten as he talks about one of his study cases, a man who, for extreme sport and without bungee cords, jumped 221 feet off the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1988. His friends were to pick him up at the beach below, but never saw him again until his funeral. He hit the water at 80 miles an hour, and washed up 32 hours later on Alki Beach in Seattle. "He drifted south to Fox Island and came around and up through Colvos Passage," says the oceanographer, adjusting his bifocals. "Quite a trip." Ebbesmeyer and then–King County Medical Examiner chief investigator Bill Haglund wrote a paper on the case for the Journal of Forensic Sciences in 1994, to aid other investigators in tracking floating carcasses. They charted tides and currents and recreated the whirling trip through hydraulic trajectory modeling, Ebbesmeyer says, trying to keep the macabre stuff academic. "My wife doesn't want me to talk about this kind of thing at home—it's not something you can bring up at dinner.""

I wasn't kidding about the rear airstairs and tipping. Attached is a (real) photo of a tipped 727. England, Jan 1998. (2nd photo is just for fun: 727 tail strike on takeoff, in 2003) here's the post I found where someone described the first time they worried about tipping: "In reply to the question as to why MD-80s and 727s have their ventral stairs down on the ground: it keeps them from tipping over (tail down) should someone goof when loading them! In the AIAA "Case Study in Aircraft Design: The Boeing 727", Mark Gregoire relates a story about when the first 727-200 was delivered to National Airlines. "As it rolled to a stop near the National hangar, amid the expectant dignitaries, the pilot touched the brakes and the airplane nose went down and then recoiled up and lifted the nose gear off the concrete approximately 6 to 8 inches. The gasps in the crowd were heard 3,000 miles away in Seattle. Bill Clay put a team together and, armed with weight and balance data, toured the airlines outlining the entire spectrum of configuration control, ground handling, ballasting, and precautionary measures from sloping ramps to heavy snow loads on the tail. As far as we know, no 727-200 has ever sat on its tail and maybe we over reacted to the National incident, but that's why, you will nearly always see a 727 with its rear airstairs down when parked. There are some rare cases where we attach lead to the radome bulkhead for extreme loading conditions."

where would you have looked hard at them before? Had you ever seen the cut ends before last year? In any case, I think you're grasping at cords. The cord would be white. Dyed red on the outside, with varying penetration likely. Any grey likely is just age or dirt. I can't see why pieces of cord would end up in a knife. To get a piece of cord, you need to have two cuts. Why didn't Sluggo take a picture for us of this knife with cord?

were the passengers unloaded using the rear stairs? I thought at some point policy was to always lower the rear stairs to help prevent tipping of the plane. Or did all the passengers depart thru the other doors? I'm wondering if Cooper went in the bathroom, just to avoid the other passengers departing out the rear...

I believe in those pics of the aft door from the Today show that I just reposted, you can see the door to the bathroom, correct? I'm not sure which side the bathroom is on though.

re: foam well I always thought Ckret was full of shit going on talking about how the training reserve would have been "soft" and how we should make some decisions about Cooper as a result. Now: was the training reserve soft or not? Your foam non-statement is pretty interesting, because it makes sense. I would think the rip pin wouldn't hold in right if the reserve pack wasn't snug? I've never seen how the pins work, but thinking about how it needs to slide out, I would think it only "works" to hold the thing closed if it's snug. i.e. it's not a zipper or a snap...it relies on the internal pressure pushing out, to keep it from falling out...i.e. the surface friction on the pin, created by the expanding canopy pressure.? So yeah it might make sense that there would be filler to replace the space created by the removal of any panels in the training reserve. I'm guessing...jumpers can maybe chime in on whether a loose reserve pack could ever stay closed?

you guys are making me a little nuts constantly bringing up the reserve rip. I posted a snap of it a while ago. It was visible in the video from the Today show on 11/3/07. Now I understand alzheimers, but video isn't more than 29.97 frames per second, so it's not like we're asking you to remember a lot of frames. In any case, I'm reposting the snaps I posted from the Today show 11/3/07 vid. They apparently went on a 727 and I snapped some of the aft door from that. The first snap has the handle laying on top of the reserve left behind. Ckret had confirmed the handle was part of the evidence.

377 said "Couldn't he have removed the foam from the dummy reserve" what foam? I don't think we've heard mention of any foam?

in the stew notes, there's the comment where Cooper is noted saying that if they're waiting for the chest chutes, that it's okay to go down if they have just one. So the waiting/delay is while they're in the air, not on the ground.

There's nothing that would make me think Cooper would think McChord would be the most likely place. There's plenty of stuff that would say Issaquah would be the most likely place, in 1971. There's an assumption that Issaquah was obscure, not on the public radar. But I think skydiving was more in the papers then. And the public actually went to watch skydiving. Oh here's a question. I've been reading about pilot emergency chutes. How common is it for small plane pilots (Cessna etc) to carry parachutes on board. I'm wondering how many parachutes are likely to exist at any airport catering to some number of private planes. Of course, that wouldn't cover the chest pack question.

georger said: "But it was Tina who brought it up. Cooper didnt ask. Her remark could bee taken to imply: 'we might go higher than 10k and you might need need oxygen". There was no guarantee that they might go to 15k, out of error? In that light Cooper's brushing it off is interesting. Especially since they discussed the option of going higher and putting him asleep! Tina seems to have erased that option! " It may align with the idea that Cooper knew he was jumping right away...i.e. it didn't matter. His only guarantee on not going to 15k was that he demanded 10k, but no way to enforce/prove a violation I suppose. By keeping the aft door open, they couldn't pressurize. So maybe that was his control rod, nuke reactor-wise. He'd see masks drop if they went too high. (we've discussed this) But in any case, if he was going to jump early/soon, it wouldn't matter anyhow. He'd just give them the finger as he's going out the door.

georger commenting on the O2 exchange well, there's a lot of info we don't have like the exact interviews. We have very short Ckret summaries of info in them. There were simple things like the flaps going to 30 degrees, that Ckret didn't reveal for months and months. We don't know when the flaps were put back to 15, but it was done after the crew thought Cooper had jumped. With flaps at 30, the plane likely would have throttled back a bit? not flown as fast? I'm curious because there's one leg on the flight path that appears to have a slow down...around 8:10. I'm wondering if they might have put the flaps back to 15 before Cooper jumped. I'm wondering if it's possible the "pressure bump" might have been after they put the flaps back to 15. We don't even know simple things like "how many minutes were the flaps at 30" I'm assuming they backed off on the throttle with flaps at 30, because they didn't need as much air speed to avoid stalling...i.e. it's not just about adding drag to slow you down, but you lower the flaps so you can go slower without stalling? There might also be a worry about flying too fast for flaps deployed that much? so we should be able to see it on the flight path map if it lasted for 3-6 minutes or more. Why wasn't stuff like the pressure bump referenced to other cockpit events that would give more precision, rather than to the last time they talked to cooper?

a short clip of the TransAfrik vid is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezHmG1Cqck4 the longer one is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BIJqb90S-8 I attached some snaps from the longer one. 2nd has cargo in the 727. I like that the co-pilot was wearing something like oakley razor blades. :) There was someone on the web who posted the following amidst employment advice (I snipped relevant). Interesting that the idea of flying fuel in the 727 was common? (the longer TransAfrik shows some tanker unload and some tanks on board..didn't snap though) Different than the tanks I posted before. But I guess they did deliver fuel with 727. Amd to dirt runways. the post: "This was in Oct 1992 - Feb 1993. As I remember it, the Herc guys couldn't believe a 727 could be landed on a 4,500' unimproved strip (Dundo comes to mind) at max gross (plus) in the middle of a black night with only flare pots for r/w lights. We did not only this, but operated routinely from dirt and other broken up type runways, usually coming over the field at Fl230, establishing radio contact with the ground operator, dropping the gear and flaps to 40 degrees, power to idle, and 2 and a half steep turns later we were on final." "This was strictly an Angola op when I was there, flying fuel (Diesel, Jet-A)in tanks strapped down in the cabin. Maybe things have changed, but things to avoid are: "We've just had an election" and "Things are calm now"." "I was on the original 727 brought over there from Miami. (N188CL) It can be seen (what's left of it, anyway) on the airliners.net website. When I was there it was exciting, bullets, stinger missles, etc., were everyday occurrences."

georger mentioned the O2 thing yes Ckret said the following about the O2: (searching for "oxygen" posted by Ckret") "Tina told Cooper that they may need oxygen flying at 10,000 feet and she started to tell him where the supplemental tanks could be found. Cooper stated, "I know where they are." No big mystery. " we discussed the relationship of the tanks to Cooper's seat, and whether the supplemental tanks were on all flights or not, etc. But nothing conclusive about that stuff. We can say that if Cooper did know, he didn't take the tanks out for ready use, right? I guess he knew that the 10,000 ft="need O2" idea was a little bit of bullshit.

"Snow, not sure I agree that just because he served on a flight crew of some sort he wouldn't do it. Big difference between kicking cargo and crewing a passenger jet?" I guess I meant commercial crew member hijacking another commercial crew. there are no kickers on any commercial cargo jets. If you're saying kicker from military, then yeah sure. but he wouldn't have 727 experience from being a kicker. I guess what I'm saying is no commercial flight crew experience. I really just don't understand where this ax/rope thing is going. I think it's just an off in the weeds thing..? (edit) commercial flight crews: where would they get experience putting on chute rigs? I'm confused where we're going on this.

even with the possibility of a couple of hand weapons (ax etc), the biggest risk to Cooper would have been 6 passenger guys coming back to kick his ass. No way he could fight back against that. So the policy of "don't fight back and don't alarm the passengers" was Cooper's biggest strength (many crews did fight back in other hijacks though). Why didn't they jump Cooper? Because they believed in him. I think the fact that he was tall and fit, helped the image he projected. People defer to tall people. It's a fact. If he was short, fat, someone who stuttered or said crazy shit, or young, things would have turned out different. The teenagers that tried to hijack usually got handled way differently. Woman would have been handled differently too. Tina would have treated another woman differently unless she was obviously insane or maybe with a gun.

georger said: "(This is one of the reasons Rat's singular desire to 'kill the bastard' stands out to me." The apparent belief that bailing out would be suicidal probably worked to Cooper's advantage in keeping the peace...i.e. everyone was happy as long as they could reasonably believe Cooper would die on the jump. Even though it's just money, people don't like the bad guy getting away. If he's going to die, no reason to stress..just let him kill himself. Good plan. Make the exit seem suicidal and non-lethal to anyone but yourself.

I guess I never gave the idea of crew experience serious thought. I think someone who served on a flight crew would never do something like this to another flight crew. I suppose guys like McCoy who was military helicopter pilot did it to a flight crew. But he was Guard right? I guess I'm not sure what direction the discussion about ax and rope is supposed to be going. I don't see what it says. Now if Cooper asked for the rope and axe, that would have said something. But him not referring to them? I don't see how it tells us anything? What about fire extinguishers? There's a good weapon too. Hell anything can be a weapon unless the other guy has a gun or a bomb. Pick up a rock and throw it at someone's head. Good hit and he's dead. (edit) How could Cooper have defended against pilot approaching with ax? Lots of random ways. Umbrella in overhead bin? Grab it and jab the pilot straight in the eyeball. That'll stop most folks.

sluggo, well paul cini was whacked with the ax just a couple weeks before. I think there's a supposition of how you control people in that post. It's not necessary to remove any of their weapons or tools. In fact, if you convince people you are in control, even though they have some weapons, it's even better, because they think you have more. Do you guys ever play texas hold-em? I think poker is the main game to think about here. In a hostage situation where snipers are trained on your head, there is no need to convince the snipers to give up their weapons. The key is to convince everyone that shooting you in the head would lead to a worse outcome than just you dying. There were at least one situation where a passenger shot the hijacker. So I think it's a crap shoot believing you could remove all weapons that are a threat to you. Not alarming anybody was probably the smartest thing cooper did. SO: I would just say, Cooper achieved the goals you're implying (but with a different strategy? Mutual Assured Destruction?) without forcing the other guy to give up his weapons. Hey don't they teach you this stuff in Nuke class? North Korea, and Iran are doing a Cooper on the US as we speak. And they will succeed for the same reason Cooper did. (edit) you could look thru all the other hijacks after Cooper. I only remember one case where the crew left and that's how the hijacker got caught. I think there was one where a hand gun was thrown up to the cockpit. Etc. A lot of randomness. In any case, there's no evidence that says many other hijacks needed to secure the rope and ax because they played a part in foiling the hijack. I will allow that there are individual cases though.

right. although if you did it after you landed for the ransom, it wouldn't matter. There are some interesting papers that have analyzed why hijackings dropped dramatically after '72. Although they still happen. I've been reading about some hijackings in China in recent times. Historically, we've not had much info out of China. I think once they started shooting the hijackers, that changed things. Well that and the widespread use of metal detectors. (guns were more typical than fake bombs) Hey 377: have you seen the youtube video on 727's carrying cargo landing on dirt strips in africa. Pretty amazing. True cowboy bush pilots. I'll provide the link if you've not seen it. Some cases look like they were delivering fuel. Evidently during some war or the other, they would buy 727s for a million or so, and make it back in like a month. Pilots got paid by the hour and just flew nonstop. Like no rules. 727, vfr onto a dirt strip. Sure they were designed for it, but doing it is another thing.

The Cooper Vane is actually a pretty piss-poor security mechanism, and easily defeated. Here's how. 1) Open the aft door and climb up the closed stairs until you're about at the position of the external vane. 2) Clip a harness you're wearing to both side rails. The stairs will drop once you cut the Cooper Vane and you don't want to fly off. 3) a battery operated sawzall (milwaukee 18v or equiv.) with as long a blade as you can get, cut into the seam between stairs and fuselage. Eventually you'll hit the Cooper vane and cut through it. Some initial planning should get you the position pretty close, even though you can't see the vane. 4) The stairs should drop after you cut thru the vane. You don't need to bring the sawzall with you. You ask for it along with the chutes and money. (edit) Or simpler: Make them take off with the stairs just slightly opened. As long as the stairs aren't fully closed, the cooper vane can't do anything. (edit) Or: slap some duct tape over it, keeping it from turning. The area of the vane is relatively small, so that even at 200 mph, duct tape should be sufficient to keep it from turning.