snowmman

interesting article on spontaneous formation of knots from just tumbling a string..kind of like "knots happen" ...or "shit happens" ... Hmm. from a skydiving perspective, the idea of predicting whether cords randomly knot up by themselves would seem important! (probably depends strongly on whether the ends are loose or attached though?) http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/9226/title/Tied_Up_in_Knots "Now, scientists think they may have found out how and why things find their way into knotty arrangements. By tumbling a string of rope inside a box, biophysicists Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith have discovered that knots—even complex knots—form surprisingly fast and often. The string first coils up, and then its free ends swivel around the other coils, tracing a random path among them. That essentially makes the coils into a braid, producing knots, the scientists say." ... "Raymer never took the class, but he and Smith did come up with a simple idea for an experiment. They put a string in a cubic container the size of a box of tissue. By tumbling the box 10 times "like a laundry dryer," as Raymer puts it, the researchers hoped to observe knots forming spontaneously on occasion. They didn't have to wait for long: Knots formed right away. "The first couple of times, it was pretty amazing," Raymer says. The researchers repeated the procedure more than 3,000 times, and knots formed about every other time. Longer strings, or more-flexible strings, tended to knot more often."

sorry for another post, but just noticed something in Ckret's post that was odd. Ckret: why did you spend hours removing knots to estimate the length of cord Cooper used? (edit) oh wait: now I think I understand. It got knotted up in storage..i.e. tangled. When Cooper saw it there were no knots. Is that right? (you can tell I'm clueless here)

ran into this nice older photo attached from 1980 (also known as Issaquah Sky Port?) (edit) found a 2nd photo with the name showing and "First Jump Class 8:30 AM [phone #]..."

Thanks Ckret. I finally found something. You're correct. There was a club that first started in 1962. Here are snippets from news articles. I have to read them and sort it all out. I don't think[ (edit) Maybe the name wasn't Boeing Jump Club though... Santa Rosa Press Democrat - Jul 14, 1997 In 1962 he organized the Boeing Company Sky Diving Club and was safety officer at the Issaquah Sky Port in Seattle. In 1965 while teaching at Clark Air Base ... Pacific Stars And Stripes - September 8, 1965, Tokyo,... Pacific Stars And Stripes - .... Cal native jumped with the Boeing club for a while then joined the Seattle ...

Jo, I do feel remorse sometimes at harassing you, and it has more to do with me than you. These two things are both true: 1) I never looked at the Cooper hijacking until this year when I saw the news that a parachute was found (late March). 2) A Northwest 727 crashed in the town I grew up in. (random fact I just found) Feel free to believe anything you want, though. 377 posited that it would be worse to ignore you. The real situation is that it's all bad. There's no helping you. You need to help yourself. But it's fine to be whoever you want to be. If anything, you should reevaluate your perception of what ordinary people are like. I am in many ways exceptionally ordinary and fully deserve a whuffo label.

Here's a thought experiment that gets one thinking about how you evaluate what's possible. The plan is to rob an 18 wheeler on the highway while it's moving..i.e. at around 55-60mph. We drive up behind it and match speeds with Orange1 on the hood of our vehicle with boltcutters. He cuts the latch securing the doors and opens the doors and jumps in. He passes out the loot, throwing it to ltdiver who's now on the hood of our vehicle. After 60 seconds of this, we take the next exit and have breakfast at Denny's. You can pick night or day and decide if that even matters in terms of success. Or rain. Oh yeah, there's an existence proof on this. Remember how the back of trucks say "If you can't see me in my mirrors, I can't see you". That's not a safety warning...that's an instruction manual for the job.

georger said: Ask your friend to recite the history of similar successful jumps in 1972. If he can't, his opinion can be safely ignored. He probably believes the US lunar landing(s) were staged in Southern CA also since they were impossible. Ckret said Boeing jump club. He said it twice. I don't know if he misspoke. The only skydiving club I can find at Boeing is the "Boeing Employees Skydiving Club" BESC, formed in 1979. The data was gathered in late 71 thru early 72 sometime. In terms of bogus data: I read a newspaper article that had someone quoted as saying (back soon after the jump) that Cooper would have suffered black eyes from the jet exit with no googles. I was curious if skydivers would agree.. From what little I've read here, I assumed that opinion was wrong. From their club history: "The Boeing Employees Skydiving Club was formed in 1979 by 2 skydiving employees. It grew to become the largest non-commercial skydiving club in the country.." It'd be nice if Ckret could clarify what he meant by Boeing jump club. Ckret said: "Didn't open the jpg's to look at the report you were referencing, [ed. the pg 272-273 report] I was speaking to the jump (equipement used and how it would have performed in a highor low opening) which was calulated by a member of the Boeing jump club, of which all were investigated. " The page 272-273 report says nothing about skydivers from Boeing. It mentions a NWA pilot skydiver. Other data is mentioned as being from "The Boeing Company". Boeing data was called "free-fall" data and specifically identified as different from "parachute open condition" data. To me, that suggests Boeing data didn't come from a jump club. In any case, if it did, why wasn't the jump club identified as the source, rather than saying "The Boeing Company"? Or did Ckret just misspeak?

Exactly. And why would I post another post after I just posted a bunch of other posts. Remember when I mentioned pulling a monkey out of my pocket and yelling "Look at the silly monkey". Look at the silly monkey. Hey I'm better at being Jo than Jo is at being Jo. I am now Jomman.

Assuming a money bag neck tie stays on, then the idea that the line snaps between the money bag and cooper seems possible. I'm not sure how to calculate the differential forces between the money bag and cooper. I supposed it depends on the difference between the possible wind loads and gravity on the two objects. Here's a random shot using some formula pulled out of the air Force, F = A x P x Cd A = the projected area of the item. P , Wind pressure (Psf), = .004 x V^2 (V= wind speed in Mph) So 200mph -> 160 lbs/sq. ft. This seems to align with numbers used when designing runway signs that don't break off? (search on google) This includes the drag coefficient (Cd) for flat plates and a 30% gust factor. Therefore, Cd, Drag coefficient, = 1.0 for flat plates, and .67 for cylinders The projected wind area from the bag is probably no more than 1.5 sq ft? Assuming differential wind forces between Cooper and bag are 200 mph max. Gravity probably doesn't matter much, in comparison. So ignore gravity. So: I'm thinking the static force between a free swinging bag and Cooper, shouldn't be more than 240 lbs or so? I think SafecrackingPLF suggested this before But we're really going to see some kind of dynamic loading of the cord. Could be a factor of two difference in what snaps or doesn't, easily. I guess the numbers are in the maybe-yes, maybe-no region. Not clear either way whether the cord would snap. The knot could reduce the strength significantly. Maybe by half. Maybe that's where the failure would be. Not slippage. Snap due to reduction in cord strength at the knot. Also minimum breaking strength for a cord is probably a couple of standard deviations below the average breaking strength (for random selection from a manufacturer?)

This is a random thought I had. I had posted the first pics taken of a 727 takeoff and landing a while back (taken by boeing). Attached again. They are interesting for two reasons. 1) You can compare the flap angles used at takeoff and landing. I wondered if Cooper could have estimated the flaps from a photo, if he knew maybe what stops were legit in a 727. 2) We mused about whether Cooper wanted stairs down at takeoff and what that would have caused. We talked about the Da Nang takeoff with stairs down and a guy on them. The takeoff picture (first) attached, is interesting because it shows enough of a gap between the tail and the runway, that a non-expert maybe could have guessed that takeoff with stairs down might have have made sense. We discussed how it really doesn't. Just musing about ways Cooper may (we're not sure) have asked for 15 degree flaps and stairs down, and been a non-expert. (we're still not in agreement on whether there were two interactions with the crew on the flap down request) (edit) we do know that the exact stairs request was modified over time before takeoff, .from the FBI summary Ckret released (the one that also included the info about the flaps going to 30 degrees when Cooper couldn't get the stairs down) But we're still not in agreement on what all happened between crew and Cooper with the stairs thing. (no need to regurgitate)

prussik knot is smooth nylon sheathed cord against smooth nylon sheathed rope. Nothing slicker than that! Basically, your (our) thinking about this issue is fact-free. It's all about clamping forces and friction. Nylon has friction. In fact, since the narrow nylon cord "bites" into and deforms the object it wraps around, it has additional resistance due to that..The key is that the canvas has to be compressed sufficiently during the tie, so the turbulent loading doesn't rip the cord off before the clamping force and canvas interact. (edit) and enough unused bank bang above the knot, as I've said. I've not thought about other knot needed, to tie a loop for a a cooper attach. Perfect knot is possible. Can't say whether Cooper had right knowledge. Don't know what weakest knot would hold..Do know that knots reduce max strength by a large percentage...depends on exact knot. ... Actually, a bag attached solely by the neck tie might have the best chance of succeeding. If the neck tie wasn't loaded, it might actually come off easier. A heavily hemmed bank bag (it was an open sack) might also affect things somehow. Basically too many variables. Interesting enough to do a loading experiment with weights, if really interested. Enough variables, that anyone who claims "no go" is ...just guessing. Neck attach would create flapping money bag, to impede the pull though, as people have said. So maybe no-pull, with money bag not lost?

snowline, snowmman, and the guy in the band was called "snow" (see below). It's all bullshit. Jo, I posted the CPS history to try to straighten you out on your memories of WWII "prison" smokejumpers. You latched on it as being a Duanism, not me. Your twisted mind created something where I said something. I didn't. (search back and see)... You turned it into something sick. You should read up what those CPS guys did. Like the hunger experiments they volunteered for. Strong religious beliefs. You mock their true history. So I don't give a fuck what weird space you go into there. People dig their own hole sometimes. You did there. Enjoy it. Those two photos I just posted are just random photos off the web. Guys in vietnam in the mid '60s. I've told you I'm not your friend. I'm not. You're seeing Jesus Christ in the toast. I'm just selling it on Ebay. Who's more fucked up? The person seeing the image in the toast, or the one selling it on Ebay? Who knows, maybe both. You have no reality filter. You also reject all help. Like I said, no sympathy from me. I had some initially, but you don't deserve it anymore. (edit) I typed "Du-ane" because the "Fe-lix" in the original Felix the Cat song needs to have the two syllables stretched out. Duh!

I was thinking I could do a shock loading test for a nylon cord/bank bag neck tie, and see what force it could withstand. Then I realized that there are a lot of variables, and that a thought experiment that identified all of the variables would be more powerful. I don't know if people are interested in discussing this. In summary, I think a key issue is how much additional canvas was above the neck knot...i.e. how full the bank bag was. If there was 6" or so of extra canvas about the knot, my thinking is: 1) If the nylon cord was wrapped multiple times around the neck before tying a knot, then even if the knot was simple, like some kind of girth hitch, or complex, there would be a self-tightening behavior of the nylon cord around the bank bag when a load is applied with the "loop" that may have existed as a Cooper-attach method from the neck. 2) This self-tightening would increase the clamping force on the canvas neck, which would yield until it compressed enough to resist the clamping force. This clamping force, coupled with the friction between nylon and canvas, would create the force that would resist the chaotic loading during jet exit. 3) A key existence proof is the prussik knot, (which we can discuss) which supports 200 lb loads easily when a nylon cord is wrapped around a nylon rope less than 1/2" inch in diameter. 4) The biggest unknown is the amount of extra canvas. If not enough, the knot will slide off before the clamping force is sufficient. 5) We also don't know if the neck tie was used (with a loop on the other end) to attach to cooper, or whether a rope around the bag was used to attach to cooper. The one myth I would like to break, is that the bag couldn't be tied to withstand the turbulent jet exit. I believe I could do a simple multi-wrap neck tie, that would resist the wind forces if a 20 lb bank bag was hung outside a car going 100-140mph. (available car limited speed :) ) The difficult thing to simulate might be the effects of shock loading, or a glitch in the self tightening aspect of the neck knot. So a tunnel test might not be able to prove anything (unless it always failed).

uhh...oh yeah, forgot...no one building rockets here...[garage door closes quickly]

I had a longer reply but a short one will suffice. This answer is wrong. You can't move and have the calculations be correct unless the wind is exactly the same as calculated in the original spot. Also the plane speed (more precisely velocity?) is different at a different point south. (which means cooper's speed plus direction at jump is different. And heck we might not have the data but possibly the alititude at jump is different. Basically everything's different, and it's even unclear how accurate the original calcuation was, because of it's fuzzy use of error margins in the data...i.e. the idea of drawing a couple of straight lines is bad graphing of error boundaries I think. Basically, you have to start all over. Surprised Ckret thinks the old calculations/map can be reused, just shifting it south. It's like it's 1971 again, and bad use of data again? The 1971 data is correct when looked at from a "general" sense. There are far too many unknowns for any real precision. The winds a few miles south of the 1971 search are generally the same, the speed of the aircraft is generally the same, the performance of the chute is generally the same. When we can locate more specific data we can plug it in and hope for a better result but we don’t have that, “is that so wrong” I don't see a page showing the calculations for the 1971 DZ so I have nothing that tells me how right or wrong they are or how they might apply to the data for a jump further south. You say "you know" it's good enough. Well okay. I wouldn't hire you as a subcontract to do the calcs on the jump so I'm not sure why your opinion is good. I'm not even sure you know what calcs were behind the original 1971 map. You're just looking at the result, and maybe some names on who produced it and saying "must be good" (edit) Heck, by way of "example" we can't agree on whether there's a one minute error on the radar ticks on the flight path. That's a huge error in possible data processing, and is evidence that no results from 1971 should be taken at face value.

This is wrong too. Interpretations are always wrong to some degree by definition. i.e. the word "interpret" implies some subjectiveness being applied. This will change over time as new data arrives or old data becomes discarded. The error here is not the interpretation. The error is not using all of the primary data. The missing primary data is the crew debrief which I theorized was not part of the data used by the guy who predicted the DZ. Basically, this is an example of failure due to non-freely-available data. i.e. believing that experts can interpret data and pass it on only their interpretation. Here, the FBI had access to data about the crew debrief, and different people were involved with the test drop, and different people did the DZ prediction. It's not clear that all the people, and all the data, were ever in a single room together to hash it all out. (edit) I say this because we are not "smarter" about this in 2008, and there is no new data. The only difference is we're looking at all the data and interpreting one way. That strongly suggests the "wrong" interpretation in 1971 is due to the factors I describe. Process failure, basically. If it was NASA, and a mars lander had crash landed as a result, we'd have a much better post mortem. Since it's just Cooper, we instead let the myth of jumping into the woods live for 37 years. Good enough for government work! or Can't see it from where I live!

I had a longer reply but a short one will suffice. This answer is wrong. You can't move and have the calculations be correct unless the wind is exactly the same as calculated in the original spot. Also the plane speed (more precisely velocity?) is different at a different point south. (which means cooper's speed plus direction at jump is different. And heck we might not have the data but possibly the alititude at jump is different. Basically everything's different, and it's even unclear how accurate the original calcuation was, because of it's fuzzy use of error margins in the data...i.e. the idea of drawing a couple of straight lines is bad graphing of error boundaries I think. Basically, you have to start all over. Surprised Ckret thinks the old calculations/map can be reused, just shifting it south. It's like it's 1971 again, and bad use of data again?

well, ckret's latest post makes it cloudier than even the two page report we have, says. Paul Soderlind makes sense. We've never had confirmation of his role(s)...for instance the most intriguing one was Tosaw's claim that Soderlind flew the test drop plane. (Tosaw provides enough other details on the test flight (which I've posted) that I believe it). Soderlind retired from Northwest in 1973. (mild atrial fibrillation affected flying aspect of career). He was 48 in 1971. Also, the Northwest Chief Meteorologist I think has been mentioned in terms of providing data. That would have been Dan Sowa?, who worked closely with Soderlind. I still don't believe there was a committee, and I think Ckret's latest claims are unsupported. If Ckret has more pages that outline how the drop zone was calculated, that would be nice to have. I'm not sure what Ckret is reading for his latest post. The two page transcript clearly states what data was used, and it's signed by one person, apparently from Northwest.

Ckret says: I still believe the result didn't include "data" from the FBI debrief of the crew, nor did the FBI create the predicted DZ. Nothing in the DZ report indicates the crew debrief was used. The FBI got a DZ report handed to them, from what I can tell. There would be no FBI agent that would feel qualified to assimilate data from the technical people of that time. okay this is new info about "Boeing jump club", so let's beat it to death and see if anything's there. The transcript does mention a NWA pilot providing info, who's supposed to be an "expert parachutist" and also getting human body trajectories (free fall) from Boeing. Why would Boeing have human body trajectories? In any case, your mention of a Boeing engineer from their "jump club" is new. The jumpers here like to talk about the whuffo factor in skydiving...i.e. wannabes, hangers-on, etc. While I'm sure the FBI cleared all in the Boeing "jump club" ...what about other people that might have worked with them? I can imagine that if there was a Boeing jump club, the discussion about jumping from a 727 might have occurred there as a "can you imagine this" kind of deal. Was there any FBI interviews of the jump club....Did anyone ever recall a conversation about a 727 jump before Cooper did it? I'm wondering if the general atmosphere of the era led people to possibly joke about it.

I apologize Jo. I forgot to mention Duane in my posts. I attached some stuff you should be able to work with. You can date them by the silver they're pulling. The rest should be obvious to you. Get the beer cans id'ed, and you'll be one step closer. Du-ane the Rat, the wonderful, wonderful rat Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks You'll laugh so much your sides will ache Your heart will go pitter pat Watching Du-ane, the wonderful rat.

I just realized I've been mentioning the varying descriptions of the money find Brian gave while promoting his auction. But never posted them. In reviewing them, he used the phrase "all meshed together". I would interpret that as 3 individual bundles (separated by poor rubber bands) but acting as one bundle. If you accept this (and I think it's consistent with his testimony elsewhere), then the question of 3 bundles somehow arriving at Tena Bar untethered together, implying a money bag or something..well it becomes moot...i.e. a "meshed bundle" can travel as one unit. That's why I said it's a myth that the money bag is needed to transport 3 bundles to tena bar, to the found state, or that a money bag is needed to protect them (somehow better than sand and water) from NewsOK (oklahoma newspaper) http://newsok.com/article/3200118/?print=1 Famed skyjacker's loot is up for sale By Ron Jackson Published: February 3, 2008 Mena, Ark. .. On Feb. 10, 1980, however, the youngster would experience an entirely new level of adventure. "I remember it was getting chilly that day, and I asked my father if we could build a fire,” recalled Ingram, who was born in El Reno. "Really, I was looking for any excuse to build a fire, but my dad said yes. He told me to go gather up some wood. So before long, I came back with a bundle of wood in my arms, and we picked a spot on the beach to make the fire. Before starting the fire, though, I said, ‘Wait. Let me smooth out the sand.' And I got down on my knees and pushed the sand with my arm. "That's when I first saw three bundles of money just below the surface, all meshed together. The rubber bands were still on them, but they were brittle to touch and just crumbled off.” The boy and his father stared in wonder. "My uncle was there, and he didn't think it was anything,” Ingram continued. "He thought we should just throw it in the fire, but my father said, ‘No, this is something.' We put the money in a bread sack, and the next day my parents called the police.” --------------------------------------------------- A slightly different account, but supporting, is next. Apparently from http://www.sequoyahcountytimes.com although I couldn't find the source article there. I found a copy of the article in digest form at http://www.losttreasure.com/Newsletter/index.cfm?NewsletterID=246&PageToGo=578 "Ingram said he found the money in 1980 on a sandy beach when he lived in Vancouver, Wash. He recalls spending time on a beach along the Columbia River with his family, which was always a quiet time to play Frisbee. On the day that he found the money, he said it was chilly and he asked his dad about building fire. Ingram gathered firewood and was raking back the sand when he uncovered part of a money packet. All in all, he discovered three packets of $20 bills - totaling $5,880 - all in one spot in the sand. "The rubber bands around the bills disintegrated when you touched them," Ingram recalls. .... While Ingram said he doesn't know if the man known as Cooper is alive today, he, like everyone else interested in the case, is only left to speculate. But Ingram thinks there is more to the story. He points to the fact that the money he found was stacked neatly on top of one another with rubber bands. ---------------------------------------------- Note I think Brian was being overly speculative there with "stacked neatly on top of one another"...I prefer to think that's an imagination of the single meshed bundle here Brian uses a different phrase: "touching each other" http://www.todaysthv.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=56508 '"There were three bundles sitting there touching each other with rubber bands on them," he said. "They turned to powder. They were pretty old.'

it always intrigued me that the DZ prediction was page 272 and 273. That mean there's a larger report. I've only found one small photo of the main FBI case report for Cooper. I've blown it up here so you can see how thick it is. It would be great to scan all of that file into a pdf. then we could search based on an OCR result, even if the OCR result was only "mostly" correct. (edit) I'm pretty sure this is the main report. I've forgotten where I got the picture. Possibly a snap from a video.

This is a minor issue, and doesn't add anything new, but I wanted to put a point on it, since it changes my perception of how the search went down. I was just rereading the partial transcript Ckret provided that described how the DZ was predicted. Looking at the way it was written, and the redacted signature that says "Northwest Airlines", I've suddenly realized that it apparently wasn't the FBI or the USAF that predicted the DZ. Someone at Northwest Airlines did. And not a committee. Some single person? What it makes me think: The Northwest guy probably didn't have access to the FBI debrief of Scott and Rataczak. He was working with what he had, which was transcripts and USAF radar and wind data, as noted in the transcript. He notes all data used, and the FBI interviews are not mentioned as data. What he apparently didn't have were the FBI interviews of the crew??? We've mused about why the jump time seems to be wrong. I think we incorrectly assumed that a committee of experts, with all the data, created the DZ prediction. It sounds like "Not so"...and that surprisingly NWA predicted the DZ? attached the two important pages.

We've talked a lot about the gauges Rataczak was looking at. Here's 3 pictures from an old 727. 1) you can see the pilot/copilot view 2) you can see the overhead console 3) you can see the flight engineer's console Be nice if someone can photoshop in a mark where the gauge is that indicated the reported pressure oscillations. Would Anderson have seen something at his flight engineer console? Or would it only be at the pilot/copilot console. I'm still not sure why Anderson was on the test drop flight.

you just can't find good hookers any more. I was busy today and someone outbid me in the last 45 minutes while I wasn't paying attention, so lost out on the Oct 1, 1971 timetable. Some canadian bastard.