snowmman

okay fair enough. i just wanted to post it, because most people haven't seen it. If you say it's not true, then I believe that. What about the dredge stuff. All those details about 36" and 18" are just wrong? And the frozen nozzle claim on the subsequent fuel trucks? I'm not sure if you're saying everything I posted is wrong or what. I suspect the stuff about "hand inside the briefcase on a wire" is wrong? I don't think anything about flaps at 30 degrees was published before '84. What you're saying might be true...there's just flickering details that seemed right. (edit) It sounds like you're saying the thing about pills is just bogus. So anything that' "new" like you say, is just bogus. (edit) We've never heard any detail about why Himmelsbach said Cooper swore or used foul language...as a fer-instance.

Everything I read about Cooper screams "pilot" not "jumper" to me. Skills, attitude, knowledge, apparent comfort with situation as it unfolded. If I was the FBI back then, I would have taken the current FAA database of licensed pilots, and investigated everyone that met the description. Couldn't have been that many. I wonder if the FBI did this. Does anyone else feel this way? It doesn't scream jumper to me. Maybe ex military pilot, but odds would favor that ex military pilot might still be private licensed pilot? Note that McCoy was pilot (helicopter).

I still have my doubts. That aside, the question then becomes if all of this stuff Tosaw i saying is an accurate representation of what Cooper actually said and did... How did The FBI drop the ball so bad in the interviews (no offense to Ckret who obviously wasn't involved). We don't know what's in the FBI interviews. For instance, even though the FBI summary mentioned 30 degrees, and Tosaw mentioned 30 degrees (flaps), we didn't hear anything about it from ckret until recently. Even the thing about Tina lighting the cigarettes for Cooper was an offhand thing Ckret said. It was in Tosaw's book. So who knows what the FBI knows. That page showing how the LZ was computed in '72, was page 272. So does that mean it was part of a >272 page report? If so, it would be nice to see that whole report.

Nuke: I'm glad you picked up on that too. Thruout all my reading, I'm struck by how Cooper's communications were all one-way. They weren't give and take. They were all commands. Cooper never seemed to "probe" for information. I was thinking if it was me, even if I planned things, I'd be probing a bit, give and take, to get a feel for whether there was anything I overlooked. But Cooper didn't seem to do that. It's like he had zero questions for the crew. Either he was nuts or he knew exactly how things were going to go down, and the only need for human communication was for issuing orders. Very strange.

Yep. Despite the fact they had only one passenger they were actually fairly heavy. You and I talked about this about a month ago, but you get similar numbers if you even start looking at 5 or 10 minute intervals. Nuke, I'm confused.... If each point is accurate to .5NM, then if you look at pairs that are 5 or more legs apart, the percentage error effect should go way down?.. i.e. compute using pts 1 and 6, then 2 and 7 then 3 and 8. etc. That's what you did? and it still didn't make sense in terms of plane capabilities? Can you post the calcs you did (can use the NM for each leg and sum them up, from sluggo's leg jpg???)

How many people would know where to find a packing card? It isn't very obvious on most military bailout rigs. Another clue about Cooper's experience? 377 Actually... a more interesting question than that... Who would want to look at it? Only a skydiver would be interested in the packing card. Hand a non-jumper a packing data card and ask them what information is on it. Most of it looks like scribbles. An acronym like IRR and the riggers initials and a date. To a non-jumper, it is gibberish and valueless. Good point happythoughts. Maybe this is just myth, although I can't see why Tosaw would create such a myth. Sluggo has this rigger's card issue as myth as his site. He says there's no investigative record to confirm it. But then again, out of the blue, Ckret introduced this idea of an instruction sheet with the chutes, when we discussed the customized rip. Is there even a rigger's card pocket in the place Tosaw described? Is that detail accurate on a NB-6? Would a military rigger insert such a card? Military packs don't put USPA cards in there do they? I guess they put something? what? I know nothing about this stuff. post 2593 from ckret: Ckret originally introduced "instructions" here inside post 2577

this is a weird thing Tosaw mentions. after telling them that everything must be delivered to Sea-Tac by 5 o'clock, Cooper adds: ' ..."also tell them not to be sending any other kind of messages because my bomb is electronic and certain signals might set it off." Tina reported all this to the cockpit on the interphone. The crew was somewhat puzzled by the hijacker's statement but assumed he meant that the standard hijack distress signal would set off the bomb. After discussing the matter, they figured it had to be a bluff because if a radio signal to headquarters would not affect the bomb, then neither would a hijack signal. They decided, however not to send the signal and instead let the company handle the entire matter.' This all is interesting to me. Cooper had to know they were using the radio. Was he trying to intimidate them into not sending a squawk signal, knowing it would be used for tracking? It's all very odd. Maybe reveals aviation knowledge. At the very least it might explain why no squawk was sent? This was before the plane landed in Seattle. Or maybe he just was trying to get them to minimize radio traffic, figuring the less the better, for him.

Tosaw's account is pretty much in line with what Ckret has said. However it's more detailed. page 10 "Cooper was a heavy smoker and often reached into his shirt pocket to take out a pack of Raleigh filter-tip cigarettes. Sometimes he would light his own cigarette, but occasionally when he wanted to keep hold of the wire in his briefcase, he had Tina light his cigarette while he held it in his mouth. When the matchbook he had given her was empty, she put it in the ashtray in the arm of the seat and went to get some company matches. While she was getting them from the cabinet behind his seat, she saw him take the empty book from the ashtray and put it in his pocket. Tina remembered part of the advertisement on the match cover read: "Earn A High School Diploma" " [ed. I think the matchbook means nothing. Typical of free matches. But it's interesting he retrieved the empty matchbook?] (edit) oh ps. elsewhere Tosaw mentions Cooper cutting the suspension lines with his own pocketknife that he had in his pocket.

How many people would know where to find a packing card? It isn't very obvious on most military bailout rigs. Another clue about Cooper's experience? 377 We'll have to wait for Ckret. But in mentally reviewing things, Ckret just told us Cooper was probably not an experienced jumper, I think solely based on dress, and not worrying (apparently) about the LZ. I don't think Ckret told us anything about how Cooper interacted with chutes. He did say Cooper rigged while 305 was on the ground. Ckret said Cooper said he didn't need the instructions (although may have consulted them afterwards) Ckret commented on the modified rip on Cosey's rig. (right side, plus out and up pull?, if I remember correctly) So in hindsight, we've not had much data from Ckret that confirms the novice jumper status? Other than mostly "Cooper did something that appeared risky to experts".

On the high resolution PDX flight path map available here from sluggo: http://n467us.com/Data%20Files/FBI%20Flight%20Path%20PDX.jpg We have discussed the red ticks underneath the flight path pencil line. However there are 3+1 red ticks, larger, made with the same pencil, west of Portland. Don't know why these were made. see attached for zoom-in of them.

(repost: I keep overwriting by mistake) Now I don't know about this part. Ckret has told us there were some instructions with the chutes. Maybe the "instructions" were confused with the "rigger's card". I'm really confused about this opening of the parachute though. Page 30 "The first thing Cooper did when he began examining the sage-green military back chute was to take the packer's card from its pocket on the inside flap. He could see the date Cossey had packed the chute and also his signature and certification number from the U.S. Parachute Association. [ed. specultion by Tosaw?]. He then opened the parachute and examined the nylon panels and suspension lines. Tina was impressed with the professional way in which he went about his examination" Now this paragraph seems to have some speculation. It does seem to say Tina observed this. So I don't know what to think. page 32 "Finally, at 7:10 p.m., almost an hour and a half after beginning, the fuel gauge on the 727 showed a full load of 51,500 pounds. Cooper was notified that the refueling was completed. "Let's get the show on the road," he replied as he closed the military backpack he had apparently chosen. Maybe literary license in this last paragraph.

on page vii these people apparently read/reviewed the book and provided comments "Paul Soderlind, Former Director, Flight Operations-Technical, Northwest AIrlines, says: "Richard, you have handled the story very well, and I am glad I was able to contribute. Alice Hancock, Stewardess, Flight 305, says: "It's very informative and excellent reading, I thoroughly enjoyed every page. Tom Manning, Former FBI Agent who led the search for Cooper, says: "Compliments to my friend, Richard Tosaw, for his painstaking research and interesting analysis of this fascinating case. William Rataczak, Copilot, Flight 305 says: "Mr Tosaw has cut through the very technical details of a complex nightmare to successfully capture the very real-life drama of one of the 20th century's most bizarre, and yet unsolved, crimes."

Everything I read about Cooper screams "pilot" not "jumper" to me. Skills, attitude, knowledge, apparent comfort with situation as it unfolded. If I was the FBI back then, I would have taken the current FAA database of licensed pilots, and investigated everyone that met the description. Couldn't have been that many. I wonder if the FBI did this. Does anyone else feel this way? It doesn't scream jumper to me. Maybe ex military pilot, but odds would favor that ex military pilot might still be private licensed pilot? Note that McCoy was pilot (helicopter).

I intially suspected that when I first got the book. But after seeing the facts that Ckret has released, which tend to confirm Tosaw, and re-reading Tosaw, who interviewed people firsthand, I don't think Tosaw took literary license anywhere. He may have a few facts wrong, but everyone does. Ckret can confirm or deny some of this stuff. Based on my reading and understanding, I think Tosaw's work is credible.

Tosaw's description of the dredging is a lot different than what I assumed based on what Ckret said. Tosaw said the Corp of Engineers is in Portland. He quotes 164,000 cubic yards of material in October '74, onto the Fazio side, which is similar to the amount on the other side I quoted from a court case, slightly early in the summer. Tosaw said they use a pipeline dredge page 112 "A suction pipe is lowered from the side of the dredge to the bottom of the river. The pipe is 36 inches in diameter and on the end it has steel blades 18 inches apart which slowly turn as the end of the pipe is dragged along the bottom. On the deck of the dredge, the other end of the pipe is attached to a powerful pump and thus the ed of the pipe, as it moves along the bottom, acts like a giant vacuum cleaner. The blades break up any hard material and the pump brings it to the surface. The material stays in the pipe after reaching the surface and is kept moving by another pump which propels it to the shore. The shore can be, it the case of the Columbia, as far as a half-mile away, so regularly spaced barges keep the pipe from sinking. The slurry, a mixture of sand and water, gushes onto the beach; the excess water quickly drains back onto the river. A bulldozer on the beach follows behind the slow-moving pipe, levelling and smoothing the hill of sand to conform it to the rest of the beach. The bulldozer operator rarely notices the content of the material he pushes around. Occasionally he will notice a piece of household or industrial junk come out and sometimes a fish will come sailing out, which accounts for the sea gulls flying around. Since the blades on the end of the drag head are 18 inches apart, some sizable objects can get through, and one time, quite surprisingly, a small television set came out of the end of the pipe. Another time the bulldozer operator saw a grebe, the aquatic bird that feeds on the river's bottom, come pouring out. It landed on the slurry pipe and after shaking itself off, got back on its feet and stumbled back into the river." Tosaw goes on to theorize that the money bag made it to the area by October '74, three bundles got thrown together up on the beach and covered. Then 5 years went by and erosion reduced the sand enough so Brian could uncover them." This all sounds plausible, doesn't it? We only dismissed Tosaw because of the dredge testimony Ckret summarized for us. This testimony is far more detailed and persuasive. ALSO: what I didn't realize, was that Tosaw allowed for the money bag to drift from the flight path crossing of the Columbia to the target area. Tosaw is just saying it got from the middle of the columbia, to the bank, via the dredge. I think this solves the high velocity Columbia flow problem georger has been worrying about. And it's more sane than talking about a money bag that magically opens and deposits, and then moves on...i.e. more sane than the Ckret snag/raft theory? Doesn't this make sense. Like georger might say: it's on the dredge spoil site for a reason? Things happen for a reason. Isn't this one a good one?

I'm thinking maybe it wasn't a real salute. Maybe a wave, hand up kind of thing. Even though, shows relatively relaxed, confident? well, the description of rig up is even worse for changing a perception of Cooper, I think. I was thinking though that it might be overstated. I think any dummy familar with slider buckles would be able to cinch up the straps. Note I commented on the probable error in "canvas" here. page 32 "Cooper put the military parachute on his back and cinched up the canvas straps to make them fit his chest and thighs. Tina noticed how quickly and easily he completed this complicated operation - just looking as though it were an everyday occurence" There is another description of Cooper inspecting the open stairwell very quickly after takeoff. So I don't know if I agree with Ckret's interpretation of wanting to jump right away. He definitely seems to have started getting things in motion around the stairs right away.

REPLY> we do not know that they didnt communicate to the company through all of the suspected jump period in lieu of squaking the transponder ... they may have been ordered not to by the company? Why the company would give such an order is totally beyond me, if they did. But after the fact they had no problem whatever identifying a bail time period. It has always struck me something is being concealed for some reason ... I mean if they were seriously thinking or on the verge of trying to kill the guy why advertise it with a squak!? The comapny would say: keep this to yourselves. I always wondered, if maybe right after the hijack, based on how they "felt" about Cooper's aviation knowledge at that time, if they might have had a suspicion, not based on any fact, that it could have been an NWA insider. Remember I pointed out before that the NWA pilots didn't have a contract at the time, and the dispute had been going on for a while. Even Soderlind's comments about the 15 degree flaps (according to Tosaw) seem to have this underlying feeling of "is he one of us?"

Georger..I went back and looked at Sluggo's leg knots/distance to see what you were talking about. Yes..too much variation. BUT: these tick marks were hand drawn right? I suspect if we allow a little variation on each tick mark (error) that we could get them so the variation in speed distance is not so bad? In fact I can estimate. A fast leg covered 4.1 NM A slow leg nearby: 3.02 NM So a .5 NM error on both of the surround tics would account for that. Isn't our radar only about that accurate? So I think what it says is that if from tic to tic we could see an instaneous 0.5 NM error, or that the hand drawing could introduce that error, then we can't make any flight speed analysis from the tick marks does that make sense? We don't know enough about the instaneous causes of radar error. (attached sluggos thingee again) (edit) It does look like if Cooper jumped at 2015, then maybe they had started changing the flaps back to 15 degrees already? thinking it may have jumped earlier at the oscillations. So I guess we're not sure about Cooper's exit speed.

What do we know about speed and 727 airstair deployability? Do the deployment motors/actuators stall if airspeed is too high? What is the max airspeed which would permit full deployment? ? I thought we went thru this. It's gravity right? So no deployment till you weight them? I thought there's nothing that "pushes" them down.

In any event, it was likely a high speed exit as sport jumping goes, but not a brutally mauling high speed. The 727 sans all the other passengers was flying light. That would give lower stall speeds thus allow slower flight for a given flap setting in comparison to a fully loaded plane. 377 Note the lower the exit speed, the more probable Cooper didn't lose the money bag. There have been opinions expressed saying it was almost guaranteed the money bag was lost, based on prior understanding of exit speeds. Do those opinions change now? I guess we're really not sure of the exit speed, but at least the possibility of a slower one exists now.

(reposting. I somehow overwrote) page 34 "The plane was still climbing as Tina walked toward the cockpit; she came to the curtain that separated the two sections and looked back at Cooper standing by the open door. [ed. aft door] He waved goodbye as he raised his hand in a farewell salute. She closed the curtain and snapped of the cabin lights" So the lights were on until Tina entered the cockpit. This salute thing is interesting. Minimally, Cooper seemed relaxed at the impending jump. "Tina entered the cockpit and the crew was happy to see her, although she looked fatigued. ... When Tina sat down on the observer's seat she told them that Cooper had already walked down into the stairwell. Tina also told the crew that Cooper had the briefcase with the bomb nearby and said he was going to disarm it or take it with him. Then at 7:45 p.m, about five minutes after Tina entered the cockpit the interphone buzzed. They heard Cooper's void over the din of the engines.: "Slow down a little; I can't get the staircase down." Tina communicated with the cockpit with the interphone? So Cooper may have known how to do this just by watching Tina previously?

(reposting. I think I overwrote this) This is good info from Tosaw's book (page 36). I think it shows how the re-enacted pressure bump was erroneously correlated to the reported oscillations on the radio. It's convincing (to me) information about how errors were apparently made leading to a focus on Lake Merwin. I suspect Lake Merwin area was identified even before the plane landed at Reno. From Tosaw (written in '84) "Soderlind in Minneapolis had been monitoring the plane's radio and heard the crew's reaction to the 8:13 pressure bump. He immediately began to determine the plane's position at that time. In a few minutes he was able to draw an area on a map into which he believed Cooper had landed. The area was rather large because of his not knowing exactly where the plane was on the Victor-23 line at 8:13 and because of the varying forces and directions of the wind. The wind was blowing from the southwest so Soderlind used the Victor-23 line as the western boundary of Cooper's landing zone and allowed several miles for drift after he left the plane. The northern boundary of the probable landing zone started at Woodland, Washington, and extended south about 20 miles to Portland, Oregon on the Columbia River." Before this, on page 35, Tosaw says something that I think was based on erroneous information from the people he interviewed. (Tosaw did his work in '83 roughly? book published in '84) "Suddenly, at 8:13, the four crew members in the cockpit felt a burst of pressure in their ears. "There he goes," shouted Rataczak, and they all saw the needles reacting on the pressure gauges. They looked out of the cockpit windows, but it was too dark to see anything. Tina began buzzing Cooper on the interphone but did not receive an answer. She tried to raise him on the public-address system but heard nothing" Says flaps were put back to 15 and the speed went back up to 195mph. But it's not clear exactly when that happened. What's interesting is that the predicted area was initially Woodland to Portland, but it got crushed down to the Woodland area erroneously. If they would have stayed with the idea that Woodland to Portland was equally likely, things might have been better. Oh, on page 38, it does say when they got to Reno: "Captain Scott relieved Rataczak at the controls and the plane began its descent into the Reno airport" So maybe we should correct our facts/myth to say that Scott landed the plane.

from http://www.ancilnance.com/adams/index.htm one? tie clip in the pics. seem? to be the rectangular ones that I've been saying I thought were more common. A briefcase (fattish). just background for the era/area. Note younger males may have been transitioning to the "louder", wider ties. p.s. Dexedrine was being used then as an antidepressant. Maybe Cooper had a medical prescription. (Thora-dex used then for anxiety plus depression)

In this context Sluggo can use "very near" because if they are giving 305 a PDX altimeter setting it generally means that the plane is very close to the airport. The altimeter settings are derived from the closest weather observation station in the vicinity of the plane's path. And if we take the radar data and assume it is accurate, the plane is very close to PDX at 8:15. Yeah, that's another thing that amazes me. Jumpers here have given examples where ATC folk could count the jumpers exiting a plane with their radar. If the ATC folks had been on the ball or told "look now" they would have been able to see Cooper bail? I mean we were joking about SAGE picking him up. But here he's just 10 miles out from PDX ATC? Should have been easy? (if they were looking)

Flaps 30 or 40 on most planes requires near landing speeds. In fact, I pulled out my 737 reference charts and for both 30 and 40 instead of giving a specific knot number it simply says Final Approach Speed. There likely would be a slowdown associated with lowering the flaps. Thanks Nuke (I always think of you as The Cooler for some reason :) What flabbergasts me, is that this 30 degree flap/slowdown issue was in the FBI summary report for 37 years. And so it's clear that Cooper jumped at a reasonable exit speed right? And the story's been put in the papers forever that he jumped at some crazy speed. I mean, the more we learn, I'm expecting the jumpers out there to be thinking: easier and easier jump? ps. There is the occasional thing in Tosaw's book that seems wrong. When he mentions that Tina saw Cooper putting on the rig very smoothly, and cinching the straps, he also says the straps were canvas. Even in 1971 that doesn't make sense. Or does it? I know our recent NB6 photos have nylon webbing. I'm assuming even '71 era NB6's had nylon webbing. Although we don't know the vintage of the NB6 Cooper got. Is it even remotely possibly that the straps were canvas? I don't think so. I think that's an error.