Robert99

Georger, this is just more of your nonsense. Your claim that I said Cooper "fell straight down" is laughable. Are you also going to claim that the money bag came floating down the river, or maybe rolling on the bottom of it, and then crawled up the embankment at Tena Bar? I have been consistent for the last 12 years in my statements about what is now known as the Western Flight Path. And your recent admission that your sources, reportedly including FBI agents, told you the airliner bypassed Portland on the west side is just another factor that supports the Western Flight Path. You need to get a good physics book and devour it.

FlyJack, you obviously do not understand the things involved in creating the so-called FBI flight path. To its credit, the FBI apparently did not have anything to do with preparing that flight path and the present day FBI agents reportedly don't know where it came from. For the record, I have NEVER claimed that the FBI map supports the Western Flight Path. And if you have read my previous posts you know that. So your claim to the contrary is baloney. How accurate are the "unsmoothed plotted points" that you mention? First, let me point out that "smoothing" plotted points does not necessarily increase the plots accuracy. If, by chance, smoothing does increase the accuracy, I would suggest that you need to do some serious recalibrating both mentally and equipment wise. I don't know the accuracy, both azimuth and distance wise, of the radar equipment that produced the data used to generate the FBI map. But I believe that you may have posted on this previously. If it was the McChord radar facility, each degree of azimuth would be the equivalent of about 1.5 to 2.0 nautical miles laterally in the Portland area. So there is really no such thing as a radar "point" here. It's an area the size of which depends on the radar characteristics. The VOR and DME equipment onboard the airliner could probably determine the airliner's position more accurately than the McChord radar. The other fellow who posted above apparently now considers himself to be an expert or some such thing. About 12 years ago, I had to point out to him such elementary things as that North was generally positioned at the top of a map. Hopefully, he has now read something on navigation.

Golly! Flyjack, Georger, and apparently others, are now admitting that the FBI flight path DOES NOT represent the flight path of the airliner. These fellows apparently don't realize that is exactly what I have been saying for more than a decade. And that nothing ties the money to the flight path? Are you going to now claim that nothing ties the money to the hijacking? Finally, I am not trying to convert anyone. You are just going nuts because you cannot convert me.

Let's take a realistic look at the map. Draw a straight line between the Malay and Canby Intersections. We will call this the Western Flight Path and it is the furthest west that airliner would have any reason to be while in the Portland area. To repeat, there is absolutely no reason for the airliner to be west of the WFP. Assuming that the Victor airways are 8 nautical miles wide (4 nautical miles on each side of the airway centerline), as I think they were in 1971, an aircraft on the WFP would be outside the boundary of V-23 for a total distance of about 30 nautical miles which represents about 10 minutes of flying time. The WFP distance outside the boundary of V-23 varies from 0 to 3 nautical miles with the maximum of 3 nautical miles being when the aircraft is directly west of the Battleground VORTAC. Note that the WFP passes almost directly overhead of Tena Bar and that the time over Tena Bar is approximately 8:11 or 8:12 PM PST. This has been discussed repeatedly over the last 10 years or so. It simply eliminates the need for a complicated jury rigged scenario to explain all major factors in the flight path of the airliner. For the record, Flyjack's red line can also be dismissed. At several points, the airliner is about 3 nautical miles from the centerline of V-23. Other things being equal, aircraft are expected to stay on the centerline of Victor airways and there is a regulation stating that. If the flight crew couldn't keep the aircraft on the centerline, then their autopilot certainly could. Even the simplest wing leveler in a Cessna 150 could do that.

Simple. No airliner would fly a path like that.

No. Basically, the so-called FBI flight path can be dismissed by simple inspection. However, I think I listed more reasons than that in dismissing it.

For the record, Georger told me at least 10 years ago that the Troutdale Airport manager said "west side of PDX". And if I remember correctly, my very first post here on DropZone was in 2010 and pointed out that the so-called FBI flight path was not believable. That ruffled some feathers based on responses to that post.

The Boeing tests were apparently flown in March 1964 with the test aircraft (N72700) in the "production configuration". The British publication "Flight" mentioned that such tests had been conducted in one of its summer 1964 issues. USA publications undoubtedly mentioned the same information in the same time frame. I was working on something then that caused me to be especially interested in the 727 wing, which was quite innovative, and I read everything I could find on the 727 but don't remember seeing anything about the aft stairs which would not be of particular interest to me anyway.

You forgot to mention Italians. I know some who claim to have olive complexations.

Andrade reportedly lives in Minnesota. His contact information is on the other blog (thedbcooperforum).

Even when being flown by hand, the pilot can easily keep an aircraft on the airway centerline. I speak from experience on this. And the FBI flight path is still nonsense.

The Flight Data Recorder was probably the same model of the one that was installed when the 727 was manufactured in 1964. Those early FDRs had extremely limited capability compared to the present day FDRs. I doubt if any useful information related to the time or location of Cooper's jump could be determined from an examination of a tinfoil trace even with a microscope. Further, the statement that the airliner was on autopilot most of the time is revealing. If the airliner was actually tracking down V-23 with the autopilot on it would undoubtedly be set up to track down the centerline of V-23 as in normal in such cases. And it would keep the airliner on that centerline. The so-called FBI flight path shows the airliner wandering all over the V-23 airway and usually several miles laterally from the centerline. The above is just one of the reasons that the FBI flight path can be dismissed out of hand. It is nonsense and doesn't even pass the smell test as has been discussed elsewhere.

I am not familiar with the A-3 designation, but it would probably be a reference to a pilot chute that is just placed on top of the canopy when the container is closed. The pilot chute used with the NB-6 container has one of the container's closing cones mounted on its top. This cone becomes the third cone from the top when the container is closed. This third cone fits through both container side flaps and is held in place by one of the ripcord pins. The outline of the pilot chute in the Hayden backpack can be seen in the photographs and it plainly does not have a closing cone or anything to do with the closing cones.

Hayden has stated that the two parachutes he obtained from Cossey were identical, or at least close to it. The parachute that was returned to Hayden does not have an NB-6 container, harness, or pilot chute and the canopy is to bulky to be a 26 foot canopy. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I owned a totally genuine NB-6 rig and wore it when flying aircraft with cramped cockpits. There is no reason to believe anything Cossey has said about an NB-6 rig, or any component of one, being involved in the Cooper hijacking.

You now have about 86 TBAR bills unless Nicky found the rest of the $200,000.

This bill number is in the list of Cooper bills included in the back of Richard Tosaw's book.

Are you suggesting that Cooper could be radioactive? Maybe the FBI agents working on the hijacking should have been giving Gieger counter checks on the suspects. Everyone working at Hanford was thoroughly vetted including background checks, fingerprints, and photographic IDs. And all of that information was already in the FBI files in 1971.

I have owned 26 foot NB-6 emergency parachutes and putting a 28 foot standard canopy into that container doesn't make sense. The 26 foot canopy for an NB-6 container has several unique factors in its construction to minimize its packed volume. It is designed for cramped cockpits. If you have a 28 foot standard canopy you may as well put it into a container that is designed for such canopies.

There is no conclusive evidence that proves ANY flight path. All proposed flight paths are still "theories" and that includes the so-called FBI flight path. Rataczak later stated during a speech to NWA personnel in Minneapolis that when he though Cooper had jumped, he radioed over the ARINC radio/telephone link for the listeners to "mark your maps" without further identifying the airliner's location. This means that Rataczak DID NOT KNOW the airliner's location at the time of the jump. Otherwise, he could have easily glanced at the instrument panel and told the listeners that "we are XY DME miles from Podunk VORTAC inbound on radial ABC" and that would have pinpointed Cooper's jump location.

Flyjack, you are mistaken. I personally have NEVER, repeat NEVER, claimed that Cooper landed in the Columbia River. I have stated many times that Cooper landed very close to the river, but NEVER in it. And intentional or not, TK's diatoms support the idea that it was some time after the hijacking before the money was exposed to the river water. This fits in beautifully with statements I made 10 to 12 years ago in posts here on DZ. In fact, I have yet to see anything that contradicts the original scenario for the Cooper jump and money ending up at Tena Bar that I posted extensively about in my earliest posts on DZ. Georger seems to be claiming that Tosaw thought Cooped landed in the river. As I remember Tosaw's book, he didn't think that Cooper landed in the river but eventually ended up there.

As has been pointed out numerous times elsewhere, the airliner would be flying practically overhead of Tena Bar on the Western Flight Path. No one has ever claimed to my knowledge that Cooper landed in the river. In fact, a careful study of all the factors in the matter supports the theory that Cooper was a no pull and landed on solid ground. Recent work by Tom Kaye indicates that it was several months following the hijacking before the money actually entered the river water.

Thanks for the link. Let me ask you also about how to make links clickable.

Thanks for the link. For my own edification, just how do you make the link clickable? I apparently skipped class and went to the airport the day that was covered.

Flyjack is correct. There are comprehensive transcripts of the communications between the SEATAC tower, NWA, and the airliner while it was on the ground at SEATAC on Sluggo's site and I think Shutter's site.

No one here is claiming that the airliner passed directly over the BTG VORTAC (which was known as the Portland VORTAC in 1971) and the so-called FBI map does not indicate that it did either.