Robert99

Bruce, it is just a case of a few of the posters here suddenly realizing that their chickens are coming home to roost after all these years. And said posters are going to be knee deep in you know what. Robert99

Are you saying that Jo was conning the thread a while back when she claimed that she was channeling Duane through the oatmeal? Robert99

Good grief!

Jo, To maintain you sanity, I suggest you just forget about the radio towers and the VOR signals. But I must admit that your claims move the discourse on this thread to a new level. Cooper did not have a VOR receiver or the car battery that he would need to power it. You are claiming that Cooper had a portable VOR receiver that was more accurate than the two airline quality VOR receivers in the airliner cockpit. And you also want to claim that somehow the airliner managed to get off course by 10+ miles while being flown by a highly experienced cockpit crew all three of who had extensive experience with VOR navigation. Jo, just forget it. Things just don't work that way. Robert99

Blevins, Your desperation to save face is getting to be pitiful. If Cooper had tied the money bag on a tether and then released it upon jumping, it would have become a two body dynamics problem ("earth-moon") rather than just a single body problem ("earth"). The earth-moon dynamics are vastly more complicated than the single body problem. My guess is that Cooper's chances of being killed in the jump, under the existing conditions and with the money tied closely to his body, would be about 99.999 percent. With the money bag flying around at the end of a tether, the chances of Cooper being killed would be about 150+ percent. And your faith in a flight path that does not have any proven validity is remarkable. Robert99

Which part do you disagree with? I think inevitably the FAA and FBI and others would have had to run an independent check with NWA officials to get their version of the full slate of communications that occurred, and the substance of those communications from NWA's (pilots etc) point of view, as it pertained to the flight path, communications in and around the time of Cooper's departure, Cooper's statements and orders, etc ? From the FBI's point of view this is all 'evidence' ... If this did not happen, then I am somewhat surprised. From the time NWA 305 took off for Reno, the controller communications were only through the Seattle and Oakland Air Traffic Control centers with a secondary channel of communication through the ARINC radio network. The ARINC radio network did NOT "control" the aircraft in the usual meaning of the word. The ARINC radio traffic was patched by phone to the NWA performance personnel in Minneapolis. That was probably where some of the ARINC radio messages were put on the NWA teletypewriter network and transmitted to other NWA stations. There is also the possibility that the ARINC receiving stations in the northwest part of the country also passed the radio communications along on their teletypewriter network. While the ARINC information would probably be gathered by the FBI as a routine matter, this information is not very likely to have any significant information that would be precise enough to determine the actual flight path of the airliner. But the Air Traffic Control people have recordings of EVERYTHING that passed between the airliner and controllers as well as the phone talk between controllers as they handed the airliner off from one controller to another. In handing the airliner off from one controller to another, the time (to the second) is embedded in the recordings, both of the controllers have to identify the airliner on their radar scopes, and give its location as a part of the transfer protocol. When both controllers are satisfied that they are looking at the same aircraft, they give their initials to each other, and the hand off controller will tell the aircraft to contact the receiving controller on a certain frequency. The aircraft will immediately switch to the new frequency and tell the receiving controller his identification and his altitude. The receiving controller will probably ask the aircraft to activate the "ident" function on its transponder. If everything checks out, the transfer is complete with most of the work being done by the two controllers over telephone lines. It is strictly the FAA Air Traffic Control radio and phone transcripts that are needed for a determination of the flight path. And all of this information is routinely recorded for every aircraft in the Air Traffic Control system. Robert99

Which part do you disagree with?

Jo, The items of interest are the transcripts of the radio and telephone communications between the airliner and the controllers. The FAA made a COMPLETE transcript of those conversations. The FAA gave a copy of that COMPLETE transcript to the FBI. The FBI's copy of that transcript would NEVER have been in the hands of NWA. It is part of the FBI's case file and would be securely protected by them. NWA did NOT have anything to do with the radio and telephone transcripts mentioned above. Those transcripts were NEVER the property of NWA. They were the property of the US Government and two of its agencies, namely the FAA and the FBI. The rest of you post is baloney. Robert99

Jo, The above is just another product of your fertile imagination. NWA did NOT have ANY control over the FAA's Air Traffic Control records and transcripts. In case you haven't heard, the FAA is a US Federal Government agency and is not subject to the whims of any airline. Within a few days of the hijacking, Gerald H. Osterkamp, who was the Chief of the Seattle Air Route Traffic Control Center, prepared COMPLETE transcripts of ALL of the recorded conversations made by the Seattle ARTCC related to the hijacking. Osterkamp's certification is as follows: "I hereby certify that the following is a true transcription of the recorded conversation pertaining to the subject incident. s/Gerald H. Osterkamp Chief, Seattle ARTCC" Osterkamp also certified with respect to a copy of the transcription mentioned above: "I certify that this is a true copy of the original which is on file at this office. s/Gerald H. Osterkamp Chief, Seattle Center" The radio communications between the airliner and the Seattle Center were routinely recorded. The telephone conversations between the controllers were also routinely recorded. Osterkamp was certifying that COMPLETE transcriptions of both the radio communications and controller phone conversations had been made and were on file in his office. The "true copy" certification probably applied to the copy that he sent to the FBI. Thus, the redactions would have been made by the FBI and not the FAA or anyone else. It would be beyond belief that the FBI would destroy the original COMPLETE transcriptions of all the conversations that were of major importance to an ongoing criminal investigation. DO NOT confuse the Air Traffic Control transcripts to anything related to the ARINC radio and teletype system. The ATC transcripts have been redacted and obtaining an un-redacted copy of those transcripts will probably determine if any progress is made on resolving the Cooper hijacking. Basically, any ARINC transcripts (if they even exist) would be of little or no value in resolving the Cooper hijacking. Robert99

FOR JO WEBER'S BENEFIT: The quotation above is paragraph 3, post #50020, page 2001. Robert99

Jo, simmer down. He's reading the right posts! If you did the same maybe you would know something about D.B. Cooper and the hijacking. Robert99

YOUREALLCRAZY, First, welcome to the thread. Cooper never entered the cockpit and was not seen by the cockpit crew. Just the passengers and three flight attendants saw Cooper while he was on the aircraft. The 727 flight engineer panel has circuit breakers that can disable (stop) both the CVR and the FDR. Apparently they were not used during the flight to Reno and they simply recorded over the previous data. The transcripts, specifically the Seattle ATC transcripts of the communications between the airliner crew and the ATC controllers during the flight to Reno, have been highly redacted. If you want to see what the Seattle ATC transcripts should look like, then read the Oakland ATC transcripts. It should be noted that the airliner was transferred from Seattle ATC controllers to Oakland controllers when it was in Northern California (near the Fort Jones VORTAC, if my memory is correct). The questions you ask about the transcripts have been asked before. Formal efforts have been underway for some time to obtain the un-redacted Seattle ATC transcripts. When the proper stars align, maybe those efforts will be successful. In the meantime, keep the faith and stay tuned. Robert99

Glad you and Kaye are working together. Thanks for the explanation Ninja Blevins-Kaye. Please continue with your regularly scheduled programming takeover of Dropzone. Stop whining, please. Those things I mentioned are laid out plainly in Gray's book. The remainder is on the Citizen Sleuths website. They don't come from me. Do you need the page numbers supplied to you, or do you know how to use an index? Blevins, How about posting the page numbers. Maybe that would help people like me figure out what YOU are talking about. I have been on this thread about 18 months longer than you and I have not seen anything on this thread that would explain what you have in mind. I have also read Gray's book and didn't see anything that I would attach any particular importance on whatever it is you have in mind. Further, I have read Tom Kaye's web page and haven't noticed anything that would apply to the claims you are making above. So out of morbid curiosity, could you explain what you feel the problem is, how you as a late comer to the Cooper matter gained so much knowledge of the problem, and why it is any of your business in the first place. Robert99

If you have to ask that question, then you are probably on the wrong thread.

Excellent! Perhaps more of the "original evidence" will become available when the correct, but presently unknown, stars have aligned. Keep the faith and stay tuned! Robert99 For what it's worth...you aero guys won't need it, but if you're like me - I love maps, but I had never looked at a flight map except in connection with this case - links on this google search page can be helpful in explaining the basic symbols and such of what you are looking at.... I used the first one, but you can take your pick :) https://www.google.com/search?q=flight+map+legend&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb Smokin, the FAA has an excellent free publication, "Flight Navigator Handbook, FAA-H-8083-18", dated 2011, that might be of interest to you. You can visit the FAA web page or Google it to downloaded it. Also, several excellent books on aircraft navigation can be ordered through Amazon.com. Robert99

Excellent! Perhaps more of the "original evidence" will become available when the correct, but presently unknown, stars have aligned. Keep the faith and stay tuned! Robert99

From the sled test, and what Harold Anderson saw on the control panels, I would say the exact point when Cooper jumped was when the indicator light for the airstairs flashed off for a moment, (stairs relieved of weight, springing up and nearly closing) and then the light comes back on for good. (stairs settle to neutral position in flight) This incident is identical in both the sled test and on the actual flight of 305. 'Five to ten minutes' is a LOT. Five minutes means approximately fifteen miles through the air. If you toss in a two-mile wide path for the dropzone, well that creates a minimum search area of thirty square miles. Make it ten minutes (30 miles) than you have have a search area of sixty square miles. Cooper could have built a house out there and just walked out the next spring without being discovered. You would need tens of thousands of searchers to do sixty square miles over wooded terrain to even have a hope of fiinding anything. I have seen nothing yet that would put the flight five to six miles WEST of the Interstate 5 freeway north of Vancouver. Which is what it would have to do to overfly Tina Bar. I think the flight map is VALID. The question mainly is where along that line Cooper jumped, and that is definitely open to debate. The only way to know is to know the exact minute the indicator light did its little off and on dance. Rataczak told Skipp Porteous he kept research on the Cooper hijacking. If someone ever interviews Rataczak again, I would try to pin him down on that point. When did the light go off and then back ON. When did this happen? EDIT: There is ONE problem I do have with the map. And that is the added time plots. Some of them, as Robert99 has pointed out, don't jive with the number of miles the aircraft traveled between those points. In other words, the plane would have to be slowing down and speeding up for some of them to work. But I think the line itself is good. You want to find if there is any remaining evidence of Cooper out there? Here's one way. Take 2,000 searchers and spread them about ten feet apart on a three-to-four-mile-wide path starting at the south end of the line, but north of Vancouver. Have them take a big-ass hike about forty miles north, following the flight map line. Tell them to look up into the trees occasionally, just in case. gee Blevgins - you have recited known posted material purdy well almost - "Tell them to look up into the trees occasionally, just in case." Just in case what? (A) Just in case R99 forgot something? (B) Just in case Sluggo forgot something? (C) Just in case Nelder forgot something? (D) Just in case you get a day job? (E) Poachers are limited in what they can remember and script. (F) all of the above ... Blevins has ALL the answers and has plenty of advice on what other people should do. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any answers for the problems with his own KC book. Blevins would be doing this list a great service if he could manage to keep his mouth shut for a while. He does not have any knowledge of what is going on in the Cooper matter. Robert99

You could be right. But what is the item in the attached photo? Blevins, The roll of paper in your attachment is NOT a radio log or transcript. Instead, it is from the ARINC teletypewriter and you can read on it some of the items that were also discussed in the radio transcripts while the airliner was on the ground in Seattle. ARINC apparently had the same type of teletypewriters in their networks that the Associated Press and United Press International used in the news reporting business in the same general time frame. Robert99

Smokin, the redactions are directly related to the flight path information. The only possible reason that I can see for redacting the flight path information would be that the FBI apparently felt that there was some possibility of that information being used by "concerned citizens" to track down Cooper's landing point and perhaps finding his body and the rest of the money. But 42+ years after the fact, the money, Cooper, and much of the equipment he was wearing has returned to their natural elements and the redactions are no longer serve any purpose. Robert99

Well, this is something I hadn't realized: redactions?! Can anyone speculate as to a reason for doing so and at whose direction? Seriously, why would that be done and who would do it? Very interesting. Is such a thing common practice or only in CooperVille? Guru, apparently ever one of the 19 redactions was done to remove information that would help locate the airliner at a specific time. That is, there is NOTHING, repeat NOTHING, in the Seattle ATC redacted transcript of the airliner from the time it took off in Seattle until Seattle ATC handed it over to Oakland ATC that has any information on the actual location of the aircraft. This means that the FLIGHT TRACK of the airliner cannot be determined. And the determination of the flight track is MANDATORY if any progress is going to be made in resolving the Cooper hijacking. The Seattle ATC communications with the airliner were on public radio frequencies, anyone could listen to them and apparently quite a few people and other aircraft did. They were also routinely recorded. In addition, the telephone talk between controllers related to the hijacked aircraft were also routinely recorded. It is unlikely that the above communications involved legal aspects of the hijacking or law enforcement activities. Northwest Airlines and law enforcement officers talked to the airliner on ARINC radio frequencies which serve an entirely different purpose from the air traffic control frequencies. Robert99

Unfortunately, the above information has been available for several years. There is nothing new here. Specifically, the redacted transcript for the period starting at 7:37PM PST, November 24, 1971, as the airliner took off from Seattle until it was handed off to the Oakland Center at about 9:45PM PST is old news. There are 19 redactions in this transcript. What we need are the un-redacted transcript with those 19 redactions included in it. Robert99

Smokin, sorry to have to say this but I have also heard of the famous Georgia peaches. However, a few decades back, I was driving through Georgia one day and happened to stop at a supermarket for some reason. As I walked down an aisle I spotted a table loaded with beautiful peaches. But I noticed on the sticker attached to the peaches the following information: "Grown in California" Robert99

Paul, Do you remember what started the above? Robert99

Blevins, Just stay out of this! Your advise is neither needed nor wanted! You are not involved in this! Robert99 You are not the Inflight Controller of me. Blevins, You have NO idea what is going on with this analysis or where it is headed. You have no technical or scientific qualifications WHATSOEVER that could possibly assist in this. All you are trying to do is inject yourself into it to buttress your ego that you are a "leading Cooper researcher". And you certainly don't know what is going on elsewhere on the overall Cooper matter. Finally, I don't need to give you the time of day or any explanation. As a certain poster here told you just yesterday, the free lunches are over. Robert99

Blevins, Just stay out of this! Your advise is neither needed nor wanted! You are not involved in this! Robert99