377

If Cooper was a pilot he probably would have told the crew to shut off the transponder. ATC could still track the flight, but not as easily. He could have then had them fly at low altitudes below ATC radar coverage and perhaps pop up somewhere where the transponderless echo couldn't be identified. There have been a number of special purpose receivers made to take advantage of undecoded transponder replies. If you make an insensitive receiver tuned to 1090 MHz any signal you hear is likely from a nearby plane being pinged by ATC. Passive traffic alert receivers have been made for planes, some with a series of directional antennas so you can see what quadrant the signal is coming from. Others have used it for cars to warn of a "bear in the air" flying speed cop. A friend had one of these and it worked well on freeways in an suburban area. The airliners were too high to set it off (very insensitive). Nearby highway patrol aircraft would trigger it. He got some false alarms but it was useful. If Cooper was a pilot he'd have known about VHF comm frequencies and transponder codes. I see no indication that he had that knowledge. If Tosaw's quotes about "messages" possibly triggering his bomb were accurate, then Cooper was not up on aircraft radios etc. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Come on Snowmman, please reconsider. You are a valuable contributor. The forum's average IQ will drop if you leave. Take vacation, not retirement. And you can't leave without telling us what the aerial photo of your lair really depicts. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I'd say military aircrew but not necessarily pilot. Not skydiver (based on choice of non sleeved jump rig and how he described chutes he requested). The familiarity with a bailout rig (shown by putting it on quickly) says aircrew to me. I don't see evidence that says pilot, but I might be missing something. The flaps and speed commands could have come from a non pilot. Snow, Sluggo, your thoughts? It is surprising to me that Cooper let radio comms go without monitoring or controlling them. The cockpit crew could have been being briefed about an ambush and he would not have known it. A cheap pocket sized tunable VHF AM radio would have let him hear everything and cost less than $20 at Radio Shack back in 71. Maybe he just concluded (correctly) that with a "bomb" and a captive crew, nobody was going to storm the plane. Was he relatively safe in making that conclusion back in 71? Unless Cooper had a shovel, it isnt so easy to effectively bury something as large as a parachute and harness-container. If he pulled, he likely dropped the ripcord which has a shiny handle and cable. On my first cutaway (in a military surplus rig) I tossed my main ripcord as taught. My cheap 26 foot Navy conical reserve worked perfectly. Best $25 I ever spent. I had no money and lots of time back then so I spent the remainder of an afternoon walking the fields looking for my jettisoned ripcord. I found FIVE ripcords in four hours, none of them mine. I was able to trade them for a replacement ripcord and a reserve repack so it all worked out. The sun's reflection off of shiny steel made the ripcords really catch your eye if you poistioned yourself with the sun behind you. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

You bet there is some Tosaw spin in there. Riggers don't use USPA numbers on packing cards, they use their FAA number. Wonder what else he spun?? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Something is amiss. Maybe the pencil plots had big range errors but 1971 radar, even cheap ones, had sweep to sweep range errors at least an order of magnitude better than .5 miles. If I was tied to Pier 47 in SF and painting Alcatraz with my 1969 vintage Decca 101 X band radar, the Alcatraz echo image stayed put... no visually perceptible range variation from sweep to sweep. Absolute range accuracy (comparing to govt nav chart) was within 1 or 2 %. It is really easy to get accurate and stable radar ranging by using a crystal controlled sweep oscillator to control the radial (ranging) sweep of the CRT electron beam. Even a free running oscillator of good design would do a decent job at getting the range right and minimizing range error drift. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

You da 27 man Sluggo. Checklist complete. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Too bad Tina wasn't also an SRE, Skydiver Recognition Expert. The non-invasive tests include screening for debt, unemployment and divorce. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

How many people would know where to find a packing card? It isn't very obvious on most military bailout rigs. Another clue about Cooper's experience? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Ha-Ha-Ha-By-DB-Cooper-You-can-solve-the-mystery_W0QQitemZ260257130124QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item260257130124&_trksid=p3286.m14.l1318 anyone seen this book? 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Hard to tell how much is accurate fact reporting and how much is literary license taken by Tosaw. The reported ease with which Cooper donned a rig, if true, gives a clue as to his level of experience. Give a rig to someone who has never jumped. They don't just throw it on and tighten it up. They are confused about what goes where, what to do first, etc. In my first jump class the instructor threw a rig to one of the students and said put it on. He fumbled for a long while and then the instructor took it back. He said "by the end of this training you will be able to do it blindfolded in less than ten seconds." I have seen quite a few first jumpers, both tandems and AFF. They are rarely composed and able to give a calm wave goodbye. Teeth are gritting, mouths are clenched, hands are made into fists... and this is a closely supervised fair weather jump. Instructors chime in. Does the Cooper described by Tosaw sound like a first time jumper? Ckret's aircrew hunch is sounding plausible. As such he may never have jumped, but he'd sure know how to put on a bailout rig. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I'd say from my experience jumping from a jet and in seeing birds flying around boats on marine radar that Cooper had enough separation to be resolved distinctly from the 727 echo within one second. The closer the plane is to the radar the sooner the Cooper and plane echoes would become distinct because a fixed distance between them gives higher angular separation when closer to the radar antenna (polar geometry). At 10 miles it should have been a piece of cake to see the Cooper echo. Certainly ATC raw radar tapes would have been preserved after such an incident. They are when accidents are involved. What happened to them? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

You may be right. Hard to remember everything from past posts. Still, what is max airspeed which will allow a full airstair gravity powered deployment? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

What do we know about speed and 727 airstair deployability? Do the deployment motors/actuators stall if airspeed is too high? What is the max airspeed which would permit full deployment? 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

In any event, it was likely a high speed exit as sport jumping goes, but not a brutally mauling high speed. The 727 sans all the other passengers was flying light. That would give lower stall speeds thus allow slower flight for a given flap setting in comparison to a fully loaded plane. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

377, You're getting better at this. Ready for your 727 check-ride? Here's a quote from a systems manual: Pneumatic Control System It is a little long in the tooth now, but it is still around and in use on a great number of aircraft, mostly 100's. Affectionately know as "steam driven". There are two control panels, again at the flight engineers panel. One for automatic control and one for manual mode. You set these by markings on the instrument and it is then entirely controlled by sensed pressures and venturi's. It's basic, but robust, though pressure bumps are quite a common feature of this system. Sluggoi_Monster Ready for my 727 FE check ride Sluggo. Very few 727s still flying passengers anywhere and the 727 freighters are dwindling due to high fuel burn and 3 person cockpit . Maybe I could get a job with Donald Trump. He has two 727s. They burn fuel like mad but they are considerably faster than most of the more modern and economical jets in that weight class. Time is money. Get ready for a return of the extinct Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. Famed aviator Clay Lacy is building one out of a couple of surplus KC 97s. It will probably reside in Ckrets territory at the museum at Boeing Field. Can you imagine the fuel bill for a plane that has four 28 cylinder 4360 cu inch gasoline engines??? 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

All, Sometimes I get furious angry frustrated irritated with Ckret, especially when he doesn’t reply to my posts, IMs, or e-mails in a timely manner. Today I ran across THIS and it reminded me that our favorite Special Agent has a “real-job” and isn’t setting around the office reading dropzone.com posts and answering e-mails. The guy in the article who rammed the SUV was Ckret. The attached photo shows Ckret in the background (on the cell phone). So, Ckret…. Why does it take you so long to reply to my e-mails and posts? Sluggo_Monster Damn, if I ever turn from highway robbery to bank robbery I am going to carefully avoid Ckret's district. I don't want to run into James Bond while I am trying to get away. I remember a bar in SF that was frequented by Samoans, Tongans and other BIG HUGE guys. An SF cop told me that when they got a call about a fight there, they would wait about ten minutes and then roll. "No need for me to get between two crazed elephants when I am only four years from retirement" is how one cop described it. "We kinda let them work things out on their own before we show up." Different response philosophies. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Wouldn't the PDX radar tapes have been preserved after such a major event? Unlike SAGE which had massive processing (which ironically would have blocked out any echos very close to a tracked trasnponder equipped acft), normal ATC radar likely would have shown Cooper's exit, especially at a range of ten miles or so. Even if the exit echo wasn't noticed in real time, it could be viewed on a replay. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

DRE? 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Ckret, You have the experience and reputation. You must give Sluggo his new acronym. Just pretend he robbed a Seattle bank and you are looking at the video. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Somewhere in the back pages of this forum there was a post about a single shoe being found by a soldier who was part of an Army group searching for Cooper right after the hijack. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Gotta take into account the Captain as lord god of the airliner aspect. Respected, in charge, gives orders, doesn't take them from anyone in his plane... that is until Cooper comes aboard. Took many years to earn those stripes and now some jerk acts like he is a bus driver. Might not be real eager to relive those hours when someone else was in command of HIS plane. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

"After a while, Scott noticed that the cabin gauges were fluctuating wildly." Gauges? I think only one gauge would have been fluctuating: the cabin pressure gauge which is only on the flight engineer's panel as I recall. His eardrums would have felt it too and probably clued him way before reading any gauges. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

REPLY> ... justwalks on the plane with a parachute and says, "it's for my grandma. She always wanted one", or, "Im entering a parachuting contest in Seattle and the prise is $200000 dollars"! . He could have pretended he was woman and pregannt? Georger, I always just put it in a canvas laundry bag and it drew ZERO attention as carry-on luggage. That's what I meant by "bag it". Cooper could have done the same thing IF he managed to obtain a jumpable chute without raising a lot of attention or leaving evidence trails. Also, that canvas laundry bag with a drawstring would have made a decent money bag for the jump. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Jo does have some good ideas that often get ignored because of her other ideas that people disagree with. Witnesses are getting old. It would be a real shame if we lost an opportunity to clear something up due to the death or incompetency of a witness who is currently available and able. Still, the most reliable witness info was that which was gathered early. Interviews decades later can produce answers that are unconsciously polluted by articles, stories, movies etc. You'd be surprised at how much eye witnesses add to their original stories when interviewed years later. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Back about 20 years ago I knew someone who fell overboard on Lake Havasu and wasn't found until a week later. They searched every day for him until they luckily found him. He had been on a boat filled with family, one who jumped overboard immediately to find him, but couldn't. They surmised that he hit his head on the way over and sunk. One other worthy note...salt water is more buoyant than fresh water. ltdiver I think when a person drowns and sinks, the primary natural mechanism for refloating is the inflation of body cavities (eg stomach, intestines) with gases that come from decomposing organic materials. If scavangers pierce all the cavities then the gases just bubble up and the bodies remain submerged. Ckret probably knows more from the forensic training he went through. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.