Leaderboard

I'm not in a position to question either your or Ryan's research of the particulars. I just like to toss in general info about parachutes and their use. Cossey moving a ripcord handle to make it less accessible to a student is reasonable, but he would not put it out of comfortable reach to the user. If he thought that he had, he could always move it back before selling it. All a user would have to do is put it on and familiarize themself with it. Hayden wouldn't necessarily need his two rigs to be a matched set. He likely had one that he preferred and that he himself always wore. His second one was likely for when he took a passenger up for a ride. 'Meeting regulations' means he's required to wear it during certain types of flight. 'Never intending to use it' means he would never intend to actually bail out, he would prefer to work out his problems in-cockpit. I know both Bruce and Blevins interviewed Hayden, and Bruce has pictures of him with the returned rig on. Did Hayden ever say anything of that nature, whether that older one was the one he liked to wear or not? Is it established that Hayden was indeed an aerobatic enthusiast? R99 asked about his airplane, and it was identified as a WWII trainer. I'm not a hundred percent on this, but I think that an old military trainer restored for civilian use might likely be classified as experimental, and that in itself might require him to wear a rig, even if he's just cruising in it. It would certainly be capable of aerobatic maneuvers, but I think a lot of pilots just cruise them. Kind of like someone restoring an old classic muscle car.

It is possible he sold rigs through a surplus store, Cossey and Hayden never met but the story he told Carr was that he moved the handle up a bit,, that matches other reports that he didn't want students grabbing the handle. It may be more Cossey BS.. but how can anything he claims be accepted without corroboration.. Ryan wants it both ways by selectively accepting Cossey's claims... With conflicting evidence and no corroboration Cossey's NB6 claim can't be accepted. It is very unlikely Cooper used an NB6.. not entirely sure what he used but it was likely similar to the P2-B24 era.. probably the Olive Drab military version.

They did have lengthy summaries, those are in the files.. but they tend to be general and lack the details. They even have errors. Today we have OCR scanning and searchable files, we can see things in the details the FBI would have a hard time finding.