snowmman

Safe: I appreciate the points you're making. But note that you try to use emotion just as much as anyone..i.e. a couple of attacks like "armchair logic" etc. Your thoughts are much more convincing if you just focus on the points you're making. You don't need to say "plus we're dumb" Do you have any more information on the clay report Safe? Are you saying, you believe the FBI and the geologist were "just right" because they retained experts at the time, and it is more likely they were correct than incorrect? I guess it would be a lot simpler if you said what you thought, rather than attacking what you think others think. What scenario are you supporting? There is no FBI scenario, so even if you're supporting "FBI experts" it's not clear what scenario is the one you think happened. Are you saying Duane's story is correct? Or another live jumper? I'm totally confused.

Safe, I have answers to each of your points, but I'm not sure if you really want a discussion. for instance "2. If Cooper lands in the Columbia river, no body was ever found. Did he make it all the way out to sea without getting snagged up somewhere? " You're aware of the, at least one, Columbia drowning example I provided of a tech exec in his plane, with a woman passenger (not his wife) where the woman swam to shore, but the guy didn't make it and was never recovered? (presumed drowned). This was in the '70s if I remember. Tektronix guy I think it was. You'd have to claim that all drowning victims are found. I also provided a recent example last year of a suicide jumper off I5, whose body went all the way up to Longview I believe...found by fisherman. On the flight path, I'm not sure who is saying the flight path is wrong, Safe. Guys like Jerry and Himmelsbach, I guess. I don't think anyone here suggested the flight path is wrong. More that the data is unknown source. I don't think anyone here is arguing for an alternative flight path?? You seem to lump us all together into a homogenous horde. (edit) Safe referred to the belief "the calculated time/location of the jump was wrong. " Yes I think that's pretty clear. Safe. The calculated time/location of the jump is wrong. The preponderance of evidence says it's wrong. And because the people that generated it didn't have all the data at the time. Pretty simple. (edit) Safe: what's your opinion of the one-minute error (apparent) in the flight path markup? Do you think that doesn't mean anything or ???

Well then, doesn't it feel like this: Larry knows, if he gives it half a thought, that there's no rational scenario that could play out for a conviction. So the only scenario is resolving it, just for the fun aspect of it. So if Larry holds back anything, it's because he can't be bothered working on something that's a time sink for him, or he's stuck because in reality it does put a little taint on the FBI, in terms of how they handled it, although I think if so, he's worrying about that too much. It would be great for the FBI as an institution to just say "You know, in looking at it, we don't have a clue where Cooper jumped, and we'll probably never know what happened to him" It would be a lot better to say, he might have died, he might have lived. You can see the more healthy current behaviors with Bin Laden...it's always "don't know. Could be dead. Could be alive. Can't be certain" The grating thing, is this claim that the FBI is sure Cooper is dead, when there is no evidence. That's the sand in the shoe, that keeps us at it. The right answer should be "Don't know". "Can't know" Hey think about this. After reading the McCoy book, I realized I didn't know McCoy was a sport jumper. They named his jump club. So that's 2 out of 5 that are confirmed sport jumpers. i.e. 40% of skyjackers who actually jumped when they got their chute, were sport jumpers. (could be higher, not sure about the others)

Good point. In the McCoy book, they walked thru the trial, and they walked thru every detail of the hijack in testimony. If I remember correctly, the Parole guy's interview of McCoy, where he confessed, was a big issue, because when the Parole guy talked to the Judge, the Judge went bonkers thinking the case could be compromised, have to go to Supreme Court, whatever. I just skimmed that. But hell, they had McCoy with the money, and still the Judge went nuts at one point because things weren't being staged according to "plan".

wolfriverjoe: "jurisdiction" has a lot of meanings during a hijack. I posted on this issue last summer. I was talking about tape archiving around hijacks (current rules) but also talked about jurisdiction issues during the hijack reposting. (edit) looking again, there is a nice list of docs here: http://155.178.100.20/airports_airtraffic/air_traffic/publications/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Current policy seems to be that tapes around hijacks are only required by the FAA to be retained for 3 years. It does say a release is required though after 3 years to return tapes to service. Not sure what policy was in play in 1971...maybe none? FAA Order JO 7210.3V covers Facility Ops and Admin, and talks about this. interesting: they even have a section on Presidential Aircraft: page 135 Example of hijack requirements, see page 89 of http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/7210.3V.pdf They talk about saving everything. You can use your Acrobat reader to search for "hijack" in that document. ("save as" first) It mentions "System Safety and Procedures" as an FAA group to contact for the release? they might be the right contact for historical hijack tapes? Not sure if that's a real group though. Also: A great document for FAA history is the FAA Historical Chronology 1926-1996. http://www.faa.gov/about/media/b-chron.pdf It has good data on what type of hijacking occured when. (download it (big) and search using "hijacking" in adobe reader) Interestingly it perpetuates the myth that Cooper was the first in a series of extortion hijacks (he wasn't) (page 162). One interesting thing I found had to do with various agreements over time, as to who has jurisdiction depending on where the plane is during a hijacking (ground, air etc). It varies between pilot, FAA and FBI. During the time of the Cooper hijack, the existing agreement was that FBI had jurisdication while the plane was on the ground, with pilot at all other times, although FAA recommendations to him took precedence. This changed in '74, to give the FAA jurisdiction from the time the doors closed, to the first door open for disembarking. They did agree that all parties would work together. An agreement in Dec. '71 gave the pilot the responsibility for signaling whether the plane should be disabled or stormed. So Cooper's hijack was during a period where they had not yet fully settled on procedural details of handling a hijack. (page 152) I've seen some hijack reports where the hijacker passed the note before the plane took off. FBI would have jurisdiction at that time, so while I initially thought it would be a good plan (get chutes/money as soon as possible)...it's obviously a bad plan because the FBI get to decide what to do...So Cooper's plan of staying in the air until everything's ready on the ground, was really a great idea.

georger said: "The insurance company would have had a full report. A detailed report. That is how it works." I posted a snippet before of the first page of the case transcript where NWA went to court against the Insurance company to collect. That's where I got the details about how the money was handed off and at least one new name, in terms of the money transfer. I didn't purchase the full court paper, but it's available online (url is back in the thread somewhere)

(edit) Also remember there were rocky corporate issues for NWA then that we've discussed. Pilots were on no-contract for a year I think it was? Still, on 11/24/71. The records of NWA (corporate) that exist publicly are at this library 55.5 cu. ft (59 boxes) http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00110.html Cooper hijack files (don't know what) are in this box. It looks like PR stuff? Could be random goodies in any boxes from '71-'73 though? Note they have files on all their hijacks (I listed them before) Public Relations Department Records Location Box 148.K.17.7B 18 Directors' meetings files: Milwaukee, April 27, 1959. Portland, Ore., July 27, 1959. San Francisco, Aug. 29, 1960. Tokyo, Oct. 30, 1961. Cleveland, Ohio, Sept. 30, 1963. Miami, Fla., Jan. 25, 1965. Seattle, Oct. 25, 1965. Hijacking files: July 1, 1968: To Cuba. 2 folders. Jan. 22, 1970: To Cuba. Nov. 24, 1971: D. B. Cooper. Hijacker Cooper parachuted out of the airplane near Ariel, Wash. Dec. 24, 1971: Minneapolis-Chicago flight. May 8, 1977: Tokyo-Honolulu flight. July 11, 1980: Seattle. Historical Files: Air Transport Association membership, 1936-1947, 1961, 1975. Alaska-Orient route, 1943-1958.

I attached some pics from a good book Northwest Airlines: The First Eighty Years By Geoff Jones Arcadia Publishing, 2005 ISBN 0738534153, 9780738534152 128 pages at http://books.google.com/books?id=y0ERUPZ1TrQC&pg=PA58 Looks like it has some good historical info. The first photo is really Paul Soderlind with hot babes. Not making it up (you can go to the link above to confirm) The 727 "memento" cards are interesting (attached). I suspect Jo has one.

Yes the 727/cessna/san diego thing was tragic. The full NTSB report is online somewhere, I looked at it (I think I posted the link above) What's really cool is seeing the effort to learn from every error, and move forward with improved technology and procedures. You know I was thinking about the data behind the flight path map and what form it was in. Is the flight path map a sole copy? i.e. did someone do calculations and on the fly transcribe onto that one map? We know there is an apparent one minute error. Was that done transcribing it from another data source, or was it done on the fly by a single person. Was there any review of this work, and by who and how? Tom is talking about getting the primary data, But there must be some kind of intermediate data between the primary and this one flight path map we have. It just doesn't make sense. I wonder if there were private notes someone had, that the FBI never had. Soderlind is dead. Maybe notes in his estate? I talked about Paul Soderlind and the people he worked with a bunch before. Born in Billings, Montana in 1923. died in 2000. First started flying at 12. licensed to fly at 18. went to work for NWA at 19. flew with Navy in 1944. died at 77. Tosaw said he flew the test drop? He had a medical condition that I thought limited his flying at some point. For us, it's just too bad we weren't asking questions prior to 2000. We could have just asked Paul Soderlind. But: his family might still have his records. Only been 8-1/2 years since his death. (or he may have given them to some place, since he was an historic figure...inducted into aviation hall of fame somewhere) (edit) Question: Why didn't Soderlind ever speak up over the years to talk about how he calculated the flight path, if he was the main driver of the data calculations. Were there other people? Did he just not care? Was he told it was secret? (probably)

"I dimly remember one case where they correlated some FDR and CVR data to get a precise fix at a point in time. Thge crew was chatting about just crossing a VOR radial and the crash investigators used that info in connection with FDR data. " When you mentioned chatting, the San Diego crash I posted about, the 727 pilots were chatting about how the airline was changing their life insurance, just like 1 minute before the Cessna VFR issues and the crash. They died. Bizarre. Talking about death and life insurance one minute, next minute they actually are dead. There was a weird transition from where they were still joking, to all of a sudden realizing they were in deep shit. http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/Tech/Aviation/Disasters/78-09-25(PSA).asp

georger said: "Tom/Snow: I assume this is all about trying to clarify the oscillations vs bump via other data on the tape ..." Georger, I don't know. The LZ map said it was created by combining radar and flight recorder data. I can't visualize how you could combine those two sources of data. Was the FDR just used for bump data? Don't know. Don't even know if there was any radar data, and whether FDR data was used solely. It's possible, if you look at the data that was likely on the FDR (prior posts) (edit) agree on the cabin pressure question. It appears that they say "Pressure altitude"...i.e. there is pressure data, but it's not cabin pressure. Interesting they record times for keying the radio mike? that could be useful for synchronizing events.

I was musing how you can draw parallels between the difficulty in resolving the Bin Laden issue, and the difficulties in resolving the Cooper issue. Technology issues, people issues, even closed subculture issues (skydiving/militant Islam) Basically, society doesn't have foolproof mechanisms that protect against outlier behavior it doesn't like. Tools don't exist (at any point in time) and social structures (FBI, governments, military etc) aren't able to "defend" against it. At any point in time, there is always the possibilty for outlier behavior. Some percentage of them will be unresolvable. So there will always be a Cooper-like event. The problem is mad dreamers. You can't detect them at birth, you can't shoot them on sight. Tasering them is currently okay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=5746114 "All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds Awake to find that it was vanity; But the dreamers of day are dangerous men. That they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible." Also from Lawrence: Club Secretary: I say, Lawrence. You are a clown! Lawrence: We can't all be lion tamers.

I think a search for the foil FDR is a waste of time. The data was unreliable then, and is probably unreadable now. I think a flight path should be created based ONLY on radar data and no FDR data. If you're telling us there is no radar data, then that's good new info. Tom, you're a scientist and understand calibrating test equipment. I don't think there were procedures for proving these recorders worked properly after installation. (i.e. regular comparison to known data, and recalibration for sensors, etc). I suppose there were some basic checks. But nothing that said accuracy was within any sort of bounds. I suppose if you got the tape and data, the data could be cross checked with something, to decide if it's reasonably accurate.

There is a long history of rule changes for FDR's. Typically when they have accidents, and they can't decide why based on the recorded data. This doc has an interesting tidbit about foil recorder fail rate. (mechanical analog, so I would expect this). This report was when, in 1995, the FAA wanted even more parameters. (and lamenting how prior grandfathering had been used to avoid the intent of prior regulations) My prior post had a little flow chart for the state of current regulations. http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/committees/arac/media/ec/EC_FDR_T1.pdf from page 10 NTSB analyzed accident/incident files from Jan 1983 to Feb 1986 which revealed a high failure rate for metal foil flight recorders. the data revealed that 37 recorders (48 percent) had one or more malfunctioning parameters preceding the accident or incident preventing the recording or readout of pertinent data. This was part of their analysis for rule changes.

Yes, If you could find out "how" those tapes were read back then, that would be interesting. In the "history of flight data analysis" they talk about when they started using FDR data for maintenence info and it was too cumbersome and so they started using QARs. That led me to think that back in 1971, the number of places that read those old style tapes was probably pretty small. FAA and NTSB probably. Maybe they worked with the manufacturer though. The manufacturer would be another source, but companies like Sundstrand got split up and/or reformed (I saw something just recent in the '90s). I couldn't find any historical FDR info at their site. Long history for Sunstrand here: http://www.answers.com/topic/sundstrand-corporation http://www.hamiltonsundstrand.com On June 10, 1999, Hamilton Standard and the Sundstrand Corp. merged, forming HAMILTON SUNDSTRAND. The company's heritage spans the course of 100 years, tracing its roots to the founding of the Sundstrand Corp. in 1905 and Hamilton Standard in 1919. Today, Hamilton Sundstrand employs approximately 18,300 people at more than 50 major facilities worldwide and is among the world's largest suppliers of technologically advanced aerospace and industrial products. Headquartered in Windsor Locks, Conn., the company’s revenues reached $6.2 billion in 2008. Hamilton Sundstrand designs and manufactures aerospace systems for commercial, regional, corporate and military aircraft, and is a major supplier for international space programs. Hamilton Sundstrand's industrial products serve industries ranging from hydrocarbon, chemical and food processing to construction and mining.

Tom: Maybe look for a report from the NTSB (FAA?). The NTSB has labs that handle real crash FDR reading. Maybe NTSB was involved in deciphering the FDR. I don't think anyone else would have had the experience/gear to extract data from the FDR in 1971? Nowadays they have portable readers and such, so there would be more possibilities. Maybe less back then.

I think that's it, Tom. You can extract what is interesting. stainless steel tape. hard to extract data off of. I guess they didn't use QAR's then (Quick Access Recorder) for easy quick maintenance data (they do today) accuracy: unknown. Sundstrand FA-542 most likely. Other versions apparently existed, but it's likely they just recorded the parameters noted in the prior posts. Pressure altitude, indicated airspeed, magnetic heading, vertical acceleration (load factor) and microphone (radio) keying versus time. I suppose there needed to be some compensation applied to the "pressure altitude" data. Don't know the raw formats. of the extracted data, or what device was used to "read" the tape. But it was analog. I guess the question is: what "device" read the tape again afterwards???

from that same accident investigation at http://www.sandford.org/...ort/html/_1-11.shtml This is the United Control FA542 FDR Note the first graph is the generated data from the tape. So it doesn't really tell us much, but is interesting in terms of format for presenting the data. I doubt there's a standard "way" of presenting the results. The second photo is showing problems with the tape. (attached) The recovered data are illustrated at Figure 1.4. The data plot represents an elapsed time of 1 minute 40 seconds commencing at 1014:33. Measurements were terminated where normal progression of the foil ceased. Subsequent to these points, a large number of stylus marks were evident for each parameter, all at approximately the same distance along the foil. These marks were assumed to have occurred during structural breakup.

From another crash. I believe the United Control FA542 may be the same kind device? or a copy?? http://www.sandford.org/gandercrash/investigations/majority_report/html/_1-11.shtml Flight Recorders The aircraft was equipped with a Sundstrand AV-557A cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and a United Control FA542 flight data recorder (FDR). The CVR retains the last 30 minutes of four channels of information, recording them on an eight track reversing one-quarter-inch tape made of Vicalloy that travels at a speed of two and threequarter inches per second. The FDR scribes measurements of pressure altitude, indicated airspeed, magnetic heading, and vertical acceleration on a 4.9-inch-wide stainless steel foil moving at 0.1 inch per minute. The scribe marks are discrete samples made at one-second intervals, except for the vertical acceleration which is normally recorded 10 times per second. Other continuously marking styli) record one-minute time intervals, times of all radio transmissions, and whether the recorded heading is in the northerly or southerly sector of the compass. The foil length of 200 feet provides for 400 hours of recording on one side of the foil. The unit was last calibrated on 11 November 1982. Both recorders were recovered from the accident site on the afternoon of the accident and were immediately flown to the Flight Recorder Playback Centre (FRPC) of the National Research Council for readout and analysis. .. Flight Data Recorder Readout When the foil was examined under the microscope of the coordinate measuring machine, it was found that the altitude, airspeed, and heading stylus marks were of the normal elongated shape, although there was an irregularity in spacing of the discrete marks which was probably caused by imperfections in the torque applied to the take-up spool. This irregularity caused a small jump in foil movement every three to four seconds of a type that is frequently observed on this type of recorder. The vertical acceleration stylus marks were substandard. Instead of fine marks from the pyramidpointed stylus 10 times per second, there were only three or four overlapping round indentations between every jump in foil motion, suggesting that the indentations were being made only about once every second. Because of the irregularities in the operation of the FDR, extraction of reliable data proved difficult. The coordinates of the stylus marks were initially read and converted into engineering units using standard calibrations. The initial data plots were then updated upon receipt of the recorder's last bench calibration report. Several attempts were then made to further refine the data. These attempts included a lengthy and time-consuming effort to recover and plot individual points of airspeed, altitude, and magnetic heading, assuming a one-second interval between stylus marks, thus circumventing the time errors due to fluctuations in the foil speed. In order to provide some comparative data to check the validity of the recorder data, measurements were also made of the previous take-off from Cologne en route to Gander. As a further check of airspeed data and to determine the approach descent profiles, similar measurements were made of the approach and landing at Gander. The accuracy of the airspeed trace was considered to be better than plus or minus five knots. Prior to the take-off, measurements were also made of the distance along the foil at which a stylus that was in continuous contact with the foil indicated keying of the radio transmitters. This procedure established correlation of the arbitrary elapsed time of the foil data with the GMT recorded on the ATC tape.

National Transportation Safety Board Bureau of Accident Investigation Washington, D.C. 20594 Aircraft Accident Report September 25, 1978 Abstract About 0901:47, September 25, 1978, Pacific Southwest Airlines, Inc., Flight 182, a Boeing 727-214, and a Gibbs Flite Center, Inc., Cessna 172, collided in midair about 3 nautical miles northeast of Lindbergh Field, San Diego, California ... Flight 182 was equipped with a Sundstrand FA-542 flight data recorder (FDR), serial No. 3729. The outer case was intact with mechanical damage to the right side of the rear section. The entire unit had been subjected to fire and extreme heat. Examination of the pertinent portion of metal foil recording medium disclosed that its surface was covered completely with heavy crusted deposits. Repeated chemical and ultrasonic cleanings finally removed sufficient deposits to permit the entire record of altitude, indicated airspeed, and magnetic heading to be seen. However, the traces containing minute marks, vertical acceleration, and radio transmission indications were not visible over the last 4 min of the flight. This condition created a problem since the minute marks were not available for timing the foil movement precisely, and the lack of radio transmission indications made correlation of the FDR with the CVR more difficult. A readout was made of the last 4 min of the altitude, indicated airspeed, and magnetic heading traces. Timing of this readout was done by measuring spacing of the the eight l-min marks visible on the foil and using their average spacing to determine atime interval constant for the last 4 min of the readout. Flight 182 was equipped with a Fairchild A-100 CVR (cockpit voice recorder...we don't care for Flight 305) Full report at (5.3MB) http://www.airdisaster.com/reports/ntsb/AAR79-05.pdf

It may have appeared in the 727 (it was in that first picture of the 707 flight recorder pictures I just posted) Sundstrand FA-542 Flight Data Recorder (FDR), The Sundstrand FA-542 Flight Data Recorder (FDR), better known as am aircraft's "Black Box". Surplused from a Boeing 7x7 or other commercial aircraft, the Sundstrand FDR was responsible for continuous logging of critical aircraft flight parameters in case forensic analysis of a crash episode was ever required

The note I just posted about Calibration I think is important. We need to know what the error bounds for the data was at the time. I don't know how we can find this. Maybe anecdotal.

As a fer-instance of what the 727 might have had. Still looking. 5 parameter analog. Examples in pics: Sundstrand FA-542 Lockheed LAS-109C Calibration of the FDR sensors and general reliability of a mechanical recorder were problems for investigators relying on this data Recorded Pressure altitude, indicated airspeed, magnetic heading, vertical acceleration (load factor) and microphone (radio) keying versus time. Davall Wire FDR with digital was used on some later models two pics attached. 707 was 60's era. from http://www.asasi.org/papers/2007/The_Evolution_of_Flight_Data_Analysis_Neil_Campbell.pdf

ATC and Other Radar Recordings Recorded radar data can provide aircraft position time history information. This is accomplished by recording the position coordinates of individual radar returns, time, and when available, altitude and identification information transmitted from the aircraft. The altitude and identification data are produced by a transponder fitted to the aircraft that also reinforce the radar return. A transponder is a receiver/transmitter, which will generate a reply signal upon proper interrogation from a radar facility. The rate at which the radar antenna rotates will determine the sampling interval between returns. ARTCC rotate at between 5 to 6 revolutions per minute (i.e., generating radar returns every 10 to 12 seconds) whereas airport approach radar antennas do a complete rotation every 4.8 seconds. The most accurate position coordinates recorded by the ARTCC are in latitude and longitude, whereas approach radar records position coordinates as range and azimuth values, and both record the transponder-generated altitude values.

(I'm looking to see if they used QAR, Quick Access Recorder back then also?) (from url at bottom) 1972 Flight Data Recorder Rule Change FDR requirements remained virtually unchanged until December 10, 1972 when the rules for transport category airplanes that received type certification after September 30, 1969, were amended to require an expanded parameter digital flight data recorder (DFDR) system. The expanded parameter requirements included existing parameters plus parameters for pitch and roll attitude; thrust for each engine; flap position; flight control input or control surface position; lateral acceleration; pitch trim; and thrust reverser position for each engine. Unfortunately, this rule change, which was retroactive to include the Boeing 747, did not affect airplanes such as the Boeing 707, 727, and 737, and the McDonnell Douglas DC-8 and DC-9, all of which had type certificates issued prior to 1969. Therefore, existing and newly manufactured versions of these older aircraft types could be operated under the same FDR rules established in 1957. The flight recorder requirements remained essentially unaltered until the issuance of rule changes in 1987 and 1988. (edit) just background, the current requirements are pretty complicated, depends on all sorts of things (attached) from http://www.ntsb.gov/Events/symp_rec/proceedings/authors/grossi.htm (edit) UK and French developed other storage mechanisms around that time. Doesn't apply for us, but interesting. "At about the same time as the foil recorders were being developed in the United States, recorders that used magnetic steel wire as a recording medium were being developed in the United Kingdom. The wire recorders were the first to use digital pulse coding as a recording method. The robust design of the wire recorder made it a fairly reliable recorder for its time. Although the wire recording medium was fairly impervious to post impact fires it did not fair as well with impact shock. The wire would often brake into several sections and become entangled making it difficult and tedious to reassemble in the proper sequence. In the late 1940s, the French developed an FDR that used a photographic system that recorded data on light- sensitive paper. It had obvious disadvantages: inflammability and the tendency of the recording to disappear when subjected to light. The French later adopted the metal foil oscillographic recorder.