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The autopilot would be flying, sometimes he goes by the name of IRON MIKE.

QuoteIs he writing a book or article? If he is mining this forum for material I don't think it will make the best seller list.
I have been told he is as you say "mining this forum for material" and I am sure glad to hear it won't make the best seller list. None of the Cooper books have ever done well at all - most of them are quiet pricey as out-of-print editions. Too, bad the authors aren't making money on some of those prices.
Norjak is going for $124 on one site.
377 22
Quote[reply
The autopilot would be flying, sometimes he goes by the name of IRON MIKE.

Believe it or not they had pretty good autopilots 65 years ago in WW2 bombers such as the B 24. It is very fatiguing hand flying planes with unboosted controls for hours and hours. Autopilots really helped on the the raids from the UK to Germany. We might be speaking German today if not for Mr. Norden (computing bombsight) and Mr Sperry (gyro controlled autopilot). The Norden bombsight and the Sperry autopilot actually worked together on the final run to the target. The bombardier flew the plane through bombsight generated correction inputs sent to the autopilot by wire. Too bad Cooper didnt have a Norden bombsight. Might have got a better spot.
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Yikes! That is insane. Bet it doesn't sell.
I have seen a few DB Cooper T shirts at DZs, but that is the only thing related to Cooper that I have ever seen in commerce.
Cooper is a folk hero for sure, although I don't really see that he deserves the "hero" part. If he survived, too bad he didn't donate a chunk to charity. That would have made him more like an American Robin Hood rather than a plain old selfish robber.
JSBIRD 1
Quote
The autopilot would be flying, sometimes he goes by the name of IRON MIKE. I have spent a lot of cockpit jumpseat hours in 747s, DC 10s and L 1011s when I worked for an avionics company. I'd say 98% of the time the plane was on autopilot. Once, in an L 1011, the crew demoed a hands off landing at Heathrow, flown right to runway contact by the autopilot. It was pretty amazing.
377
The term 'Iron Mike' for an AP must be exclusive to the heavy aircraft industry.
Most of my aviation experience is in aircraft <12,500lbs, and my fellow light aircraft pilots have always called an autopilot 'George' for as long as I can remember.
BASE359
in a quiet little town,
and forgot about everything"
quade 4
QuoteCould you, Quade, look into this or maybe get an official comment from Sangiro?
I don't want to post my solution to the DB mystery without knowing if I own my words...or someone else owns them.
This would follow along with general Copyright principles.
You "own" all of the original words you write at the moment you write them.
That said, if you were to write "quade did it", that would not actually fall within Copyright law, it's simply not long enough or unique enough.
If you were to write a timeline and theory of events and later somebody took those events and wrote a screenplay out of it . . . you'd still be hosed because Copyright does not apply to that either. Ideas can't be Copyrighted.
The World's Most Boring Skydiver
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The term 'Iron Mike' for an AP must be exclusive to the heavy aircraft industry.
Most of my aviation experience is in aircraft <12,500lbs, and my fellow light aircraft pilots have always called an autopilot 'George' for as long as I can remember.
BASE359
I think GEORGE is the more common term. IRON MIKE came from a Sea Fury race pilot at the Reno Air Races who was a former Pan Am pilot. The guy used to commercial fish and may have taken the term from west coast fishing where autopilots are most often referred to as Iron Mikes.
If Cooper knew about 15 degrees of flap, 10K unpressurized, and 170 kts top speed he likely also knew about 727 autopilots. The fact that he didn't harm or kill the crew is significant. He was a crook, but not a killer.
Guru312 0
QuoteThat said, if you were to write "quade did it", that would not actually fall within Copyright law, it's simply not long enough or unique enough.
Quade did it
I am not D. B. Cooper.
Quade did it.
© 2008 Bernard Sayers
I am not DB Cooper
Posted Thu Jul 21 2005
By sangiro
Copyright
All content on this site, including text, graphics, logos, icons, images, designs, audio clips, and software, is the property of Dropzone.com. or its content suppliers and is protected by international copyright laws. The compilation (meaning the collection, arrangement, and assembly) of all content on this site is the exclusive property of Dropzone.com and is protected by international copyright laws."
******************
Despite what the above notice says you could excerpt a few posts, better yet just paraphrase them a bit and have no real world legal worries. You certainly couldn't legally republish the entire website content or large portions verbatim, but uses of tiny bits may be covered under the "FAIR USE" exception/defense to copyright infingement. Paraphrasing, giving the same message with different words, is another way around the copyright infringment issues.
Parody has also been used as a defense. If they are quoting posts on this forum to make fun of us (an easy task given our excesses), its probably OK.
People get their lines all spun up about copyrights, but in the end, unless you get nailed by the RIAA for pirate music downloads, you are very unlikely to be a defendant in a federal court suit for copyright infringment. As for the criminal side, only Ckret could tell us with any authority. The feds have shut down pirate DVD and CD factories and arrested their operators, but as long as people are robbing banks, selling pirated software and forging social security checks, I don't think the FBI is going to be pursuing people for excessive quote lifting from dropzone.com.
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