dudeman17

A few points... Interesting that Donna Elliot says that she heard the plane and that it sounded low. How does 'east side of Amboy' relate to the flight path(s)? The guy with the notebook says 'went on to tell'... 'ordered the pilot to fly over I5'. It doesn't necessarily say who gave that order. Is it possible the authorities gave that order, to put Cooper closer to, as Blevins says, more populated areas that would have more cops available for a search?

OK. The mention of 'Roger' and 'Quincy' in the same post made me misconstrue.

First you have to decide which of those is most important to you. --------- AKA Mad Skillz. Apt.

Aww, ignore Joe. He's been around a long time, but maybe he's getting old, crotchety, senile and jaded. Maybe he spent too much time as a dzo, where someone balking in the door is costing him money and pissing him off, rather than as an instructor where someone like you reminds us what it was like to be new. Anyways... If you can just come to the realization that that's a pretty good description of FUN, then you'll be on your way to becoming a skydiver. Keep that in mind. Next time you're on the ride up, remember - You're not exiting the airplane, you're entering the skydive. ------- this is exactly why HA!

Any decision you make about what you should actually do should involve direct, in person consultation with your instructors. What I can tell you here is that skydiving requires the ability to absolutely focus on the task at hand, regardless of what is going on. That can apply to pulls, EPs, or whatever comes up that requires your timely response. Practice your jump plan so that your required body position and sequence is absolutely ingrained, then get out there and do it. As NickDG used to borrow from Magnum, 'Don't look at the dogs, work the lock'.

There is either something missing here or it shows a complete lack of adequate communication within the FBI. If they did not take any of Cossey's back rigs that night, then every FBI agent should have known that from the start. So any description of those rigs should have been met with 'no, we didn't take those'. Cossey should have known that immediately or soon thereafter. I can't imagine that Emrich wouldn't have called him and told him as soon as the cops left the dz that night. But even if Emrich didn't, Cossey should have known within a day or two either by talking with Emrich or going to the dz and seeing that none of his rigs were missing. So why would the FBI either ask for or accept any descriptions involving Cossey's rigs? ------- Here's a thing - If the only back rigs in play were Hayden's, then it might not be possible to know what color the canopies were. Hayden may not know. He never actually used them (jumped / opened), so he only handled and saw them in their packed condition. Unless he asked out of his own curiosity, he wouldn't know as he likely never saw the canopies. Cossey might likely not remember. If he took care of all the student gear at the dz, and he packed reserves for several jumpers, and he took care of several pilot rigs, both ones brought to his loft and ones sent by that store where Hayden bought his, then it might be a bit much for him to remember details (color) of all the rigs he handled. And it might not be in his records. His rigger's logs would contain the same info as the cards - make, model, serial numbers, and whatever it was he did to them, i.e. standard repack or any repairs or component replacements. In that context, canopy color would be incidental.

Regarding the chutes... You study the evidence a lot closer than I do, so I have to follow you on this, but it begs a question... Cossey would have to know that. Emrich would tell him and/or he would see it the next time he was at the dz. ??? He (and the FBI) would know that they weren't. Now, Cossey seemed to like to bs reporters, so anything he told them can be discounted as unreliable. But as for the communication between Cossey and the FBI... Why would the FBI ask for and rely on Cossey's descriptions when they both knew that they were not Cossey's chutes? If they were asking Cossey for descriptions of Hayden's chutes based on the fact that he packed them, that would have to have been clarified. But Cossey probably wouldn't have remembered, and any info he would have in his records would be the same info on the packing cards. ??? ----- Also, where would any of the info on the McChord chutes (and their rejection) have come from?

"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." - Abraham Lincoln "There is no happiness. There is only concentration." - Al Pacino Take your pick.

I have an image in my mind. An old man calls a press conference. He walks up to the lectern with an old parachute, a stack of twenties, and other definitive proof that he is in fact D B Cooper. But nobody hears a word he says, because the entire audience is engaged in an old west saloon style brawl, with fists and chairs flying everywhere.

This cannot be stressed strongly enough or often enough.

To me, those are separate issues. As per Blevins' account of Hayden's rigs - Everything Hayden said in Blevins' interview could be true and accurate, same with the FBI report he uses to back that up. All of it could be accurate as per Hayden's rigs. (And Cossey may or may not have owned those rigs at some point.) Completely separate, is whether or not Cossey also supplied other rigs, and how that may have happened. They are not mutually exclusive. Each could have supplied rigs, unbeknownst to the other.

Here's one my dad liked - So you know the old saying, "Honesty is the best policy". well here's a rebuttal... "Honesty is NOT the best policy. In fact, it's not a policy at all. You either is or you ain't."

Robert quotes Ulis... then says I've said this before somewhere, but I'll submit it again... The market for used parachutes is very limited and the community of people who deal in them is very small. If that store where Hayden bought his rigs used Cossey for pack jobs, it's entirely possible that they also bought rigs from him. I'm not saying that Cossey had owned those rigs at some point, I would have no way of knowing, but it would not be far-fetched if he had.

You took that down? I wasn't going to flame, but I sure was curious. Wow indeed. Curious what the TI makes. I'm guessing you're getting a lot of applications for the TI slots, but are being extremely selective.

lol yes - see pics 4 & 5 of your photo sequence then better packing too yes you do then we'll just wait for your ash dive I think we can tell

Re: 'scene ended her marriage to Joe DiMaggio'... On one hand, poor Joe (sort of), but geez, if you know you're a jealous man and you marry Marilyn Monroe, what do you expect? Sort of related story - Back whenever it was that Simon and Garfunkel's 'Mrs. Robinson' was a hit, supposedly Joe DiMaggio was at a New York restaurant and saw Paul Simon at another table. Joe went over and challenged him, "what do you mean 'where have I gone', I didn't go anywhere?!".

Congratulations on getting back in the air! Is that Taft? It looks like Taft, but I thought you were farther north. I'm also guessing it was windy because it looks like you've got a shagger lurking to help collapse your canopy. I made some jumps in June to keep my AFF rating current, but I'm standing down again while Delta does it's thing.

I think you're conflating whether the lines were daisy chained with whether Cooper may have known it. In any case, daisy chains are not permanent. They are easy to do and undo. It would not be a reason for Cooper to avoid getting lines from it. It would also not require the person daisy chaining them to be the one who made the dummy. How many dummy reserves they had would depend on how many students they typically trained at a time, and whether they exclusively used a hanging harness or just practiced standing on the ground. Interesting video, Flyjack.

I think Cossey did say that he got a rig back, but like most of what he said, it's hard to know if that's true. Hayden definitely did get a rig returned from the FBI, but there is a possibility that it was not the rig left on the plane. If the FBI got (back) rigs from both Cossey and Hayden, then we wouldn't know which two they gave to Cooper. The rig Hayden got returned may never have been given to Cooper. See some of Flyjack's recent posts for theories on that (according to the serial numbers). Some of this may be solved if and when the Museum lets Shutter's rigger examine Hayden's rig and he collects serial numbers off of every component, including the pilot chute and bridle. Hell, that could have become Emrich's next dummy training reserve!

No it doesn't. To the casual observer, they may look similar, but they're not. Depending on the canopy inside, it might be bulkier. And the color? And it would have the D-rings, but those might not be readily apparent to someone who doesn't know them. And it doesn't have a seal or packing card.

I don't know what to make of Cossey's statements because there's no way to tell if they're true or accurate. But if they are... A sport main would have the D-rings for the reserve. So if Cooper knew what he was looking at, he might have been better off to take the sport rig and the good reserve. However, the money was bulky, so maybe he didn't have room for both the good reserve and the money. So maybe he figured that the bailout rig, being rigger packed, was more reliable for opening. But for choice of landing area, he's better off with a steerable canopy. But maybe he doesn't know that the reserve is non-steerable. But, but, but... I don't know, but I have a hard time imagining that the FBI would give back anything that was actually used in the case. That Hayden got his rig back kind of supports the idea that there were more chutes and that one was not given to Cooper. I dunno. Look at how they deal with the Amboy chute, they claim it wasn't used but they won't let anyone see it. They kept the front reserve. Like I said, I dunno, but I would expect them to keep anything left on the plane.

I don't do any social media, so I don't have facebook, but there's an old school skydiver's page on there where he or someone like him might be found. NickyB knows where that's at. In normal use the lines were stowed in rubber bands. In those front reserves they were usually in the base of the container. Those bands can be seen in the Tom Kaye pictures of the reserve in FBI evidence. Sometimes a deployment device known as a diaper was on the bottom of the skirt of the canopy, and the lines would be stowed on that. That would sequence the opening a bit, reducing the possibility of some types of malfunction, but would take a bit longer to open.

Any reserve or bailout rig (which IS a reserve) is required to be packed by a rigger and thus has a seal and a card. Sport mains do not. One thing I have wondered is, when they ask Emrich for the reserves but not the mains, he has to wonder where they're getting the mains from. If they tell him 'oh, from some pilot', then he knows they are bailout rigs and do not have the D-rings for the reserves. That could be why he gives the dummy, because he knows it can't be used anyway. If he points this out (or if he asks in the first place) he may be volunteering two more of his rigs that he'll never see again, so maybe he just keeps his mouth shut. (This kind of depends on whether Cossey's story of supplying back chutes is true, and if Emrich knew about it.) It has been speculated that Cooper used the dummy reserve container to hold some of the money. Or he may have seen it was a dummy and it pissed him off so he pitched it out. Like most of this case, anything is possible.

There is no way that he didn't. Emrich - jumper, instructor, owned the dz which includes the student and training gear... Any other jumper who may have been staying on site would either be a rigger, instructor, or possibly a young jumper who went through training there... Any one of them would instantly know that training dummy from across the room, in the dark, half asleep, and fully drunk. I, too, have speculated that it may have been intentional. At the time, no one would have any idea of Cooper or the folk lore that he would become. But a lot of hijackings were taking place by terrorist types with political motives. So Emrich may well have given the cheapest, most replaceable gear he could, and who cares if the guy goes in. 'Take me to Havana? Here's your Havana!' And the thought of someone just opening the door and letting the cops grab what they may is totally unlikely, because if Emrich wasn't there, someone who jumped there would be.