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QuoteThe SAGE systems were pretty reliable even with all those vacuum tubes, because they had a second one always ready for hot standby. They were in use till early '80s, apparently even after ICBM's made them not as useful (not fast enough). The reliability of little bits of technology is not important, since you can always link "more" of it together to compensate for failure rates. The important thing is to be able to predict or measure failure rates. High reliability is useful for bringing down costs. ********************** One SAGE story that I got a big laugh from is that they noticed that failure of a certain processor module did not seem to degrade system performance. Turns out that the module did absolutely nothing. It was part of an early systems design, somehow never got deleted, and made it into production. Can you imagine the heat generated by 70,000 vacuum tubes? I used to warm a cold room in the winter with a Tektronix 535 scope that had about 40 tubes. Were ICBM speeds really why SAGE became obsolete? Weren't ICBMs around when SAGE was introduced? I had assumed that maintenance costs and the declining threat of enemy bombers in US airspace doomed SAGE as it aged. I don't think SAGE could even see an ICBM until it got so low as to be unstoppable. I talked to some old timers who manned a NIKE missile base in Marin County. They almost launched on an unscheduled trans Pacific airliner that had failed to ID itself and continued onward towards the Calif coast. The guy in charge said don't launch even though they had clearance to do it and all checklists had been cleared. He just thought the odds of a single aircraft attacking the US were too damned low. Wish the same guy had been aboard that USN cruiser that launched on the Iranian airliner. I love vacuum tube technology and am restoring a WW2 military aircraft radio receiver and transmitter for ham band operation. Real radios glow in the dark. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

You know what they say about high res radar antenna design: size matters. And on thermodynamics as applied to anything including circuits which purport to reduce broadband random (incoherent) noise mixed in with a signal: 1. you can't get ahead. 2. you can't break even. 3. Don't even try. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Re: angular resolution of the radar which was painting NWA Cooper flt If you can get me the dimensions (especially the length) of the radar antenna I can give you a good estimate of angular resolution. Basically, long antennas have better angular resolution than short ones. One reason that you see the big drag adding rotodome antenna on top of the AWACS planes is that they need the long antenna length to get good angular resolution and the dimensions require external mounting. One big disadvantage of these new tiny (14 inch for X band) radome radar antennas for small boats is that the poor angular resolution will make two distant separate islands which have a narrow passage between them (and are are roughly equidistant from the boat) look like one island with no space in between. Cooper's flight may have been simultaneously painted by several radars capable of capturing his body echo as he departed from the 727, but there is little hope that raw tapes of unprocessed echo signals still exist. SAGE, which combined inputs from many radars in its network and processed them through a digital computer that have over 70,000 VACUUM TUBES, would have filtered out such a body echo if the 727 had its transponder on, which I am certain it did. When SAGE was tracking an active transponder equipped aircraft, it created a blank window around the plane's echo into which data characters were displayed on the CRT. One interesting radar tidbit is that when the USAF scooped the Navy by bringing in a B2 for a low level flyby along the SF bay waterfront right befoe a Fleet Week Blue Angels appearance, its echo was clearly painted by many boat radars in the area. Since the USAF spent billions to make this plane stealthy and invisible to radar, eyebrows were raised. The USAF claimed that they flew the B2 in domestic airspace with passive radar reflectors installed so nobody could assess their stealth specs. In posts long ago we got confirmation that exiting skydivers were not only visible to ATC radar up to at least 60 miles away, but that they could even count the jumpers. It just kills me that radar likely painted Cooper's echo as he left the plane, but that data is long gone. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Does anyone besides me see an inherent contradiction here: a guy who gets arrested more than two dozen times, is convicted and sentenced many times and then assuming the same guy pulls off a mastermind crime that never has been solved? Duane just doesnt seem like the guy who could have pulled it off judging by past performance at his chosen trade of crime. To be blunt, he just doesnt seem like a guy who could successfully conceive, plan and execute such a complex caper. Wolfgang DOES. That doesnt rule out Duane as Cooper or prove Wolfgang was Cooper, but it's another data point. Jo does seem to blur the line between attacks on her evidentiary claims and attacks on her character. I think she is a sincere person who has suffered a lot. That doesn't mean we have to tread softly on her or anyone else's unsubstantiated Cooper claims, but try to spare the toxic venom, she really doesnt deserve it. Tossed out or ripped off the foot... hard to say, there is no way a penny loafer would stay on the foot of a jumper exiting a jet. That windblast trys to strip off everything and succeeds if it isnt fastened tightly. I never had my goggles come loose on any jump before, but on the jet jump they were instantly stripped right off my face and would have been long gone but for hanging up on the helmet lip. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Sounds like Duane could see OK without glasses. I wear prescription goggles when I jump. I'd have a tough time landing off DZ without them, especially at night. The term "aft" in my experience is used mostly by people familiar with boats. It is used in aviation, but less so with "rear" being more common. Did Duane ever use nautical terms like fore, aft, port, starboard etc? 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Snowman, You keep finding new clues in old stuff... pretty impressive to me. The glasses issue with Duane was literally staring me right in the face but I missed it. One thing for sure is that your glasses wouldn't stay on during exit. My goggles which were always plenty tight were ripped off my face and lodged up against my helmet rim on my jet jump. What was Duane's uncorrected vision in 71? You'd have to see pretty well to have any hope of making a good landing. The glasses issue doesn't rule Duane out 100%, but it raises some questions. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

wondering about the details... This would result in a loss of cabin pressure which is a HUGE deal if at high altitudes. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Tail strikes are far more common on takeoff than landings in pax jets which tells you something about fuselage angles relative to the runway in both operations. Some jets even have structural components to minimize damage from tail strikes like skids, plates, strakes etc. The long stretched jets had more problems than short ones as you might guess from the geometry involved. Taking off with the stairs down involved unknown risks. Might they have pulled it off? Sure. Were they certain it could be done safely? Apparently not. If you really want to get double clever, maybe Cooper asked for a stair down takeoff knowing they wouldn't do it and that it would make it less likely that the investigation could link him to knowledge of the Boeing flight tests. As I recall the Hercs I've jumped from do not have the rear ramp down on takeoff. Maybe Cooper thought if he asked for something not normally done, his expertise about airdrops would be underestimated. I still want to know what Tina thinks of Wolfgang's very clear 1970s photo. That will tell me a LOT while we are waiting for Ckrets govt cogs and gears to grind out a print or DNA analysis. Even if Jo is right about Galen altering the Cooper composite drawings, to my eye Wolfgang looks like all of the Cooper drawings, altered and original. If Wolfgang is proven to be Cooper then that is one hell of a fine job that was done by the composite artist/technician and the witnesses. Although Jo will probably disagree, you gotta admire Ckret for toughing it out for low FBI SA pay working in a frustrating bureaucracy and even going to Iraq recently for probably 10% of what the Blackwater goons make. As taxpayer's, we are really getting our money's worth from Ckret. The FBI guys don't even get to take free donuts. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

QuoteOn tv, CSI solves stuff like this in 45 minutes. "We've identified the red fiber as a polymer only used on the production of Solar Powered Cat Polishers... and there are... 3 of these businesses in a 30 mile radius... send a team of 90 people in honkin' big SUVs to each site for a week." Read about how they found the freeway strangler in Calif, pretty close to that CSI fantasy stuff. The strangler's cord fibers were unique to parachute suspension lines and they nailed the culprit who was a jumper and DZ packer who NOBODY suspected. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Hope there is some way to get the NWA stewardess to look at those photos. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Did you read the article? Nothing to do with court proceedings at all. he worked for the judge in question. But that wasn't the point of the original post anyway; the exchange if it happened, seemed to argue against any original coverup i.e. there was no conspiracy, just a guy who got away with a crime. sorry, Orange. Guess I misinterpreted your post and responded before I read the article part about the judge. Still, sounds very odd. Why would he confess to anyone? Working in the public defenders office he'd know that confessions lead to convictions. They don't solve any problems besides perhaps relieving guilt. They don't get you out of legal trouble. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Orange 1 wrote:" snowmman, re the 'cover up' theory, that doesn't seem to tie with the description of a confession to a judge that he left prints behind and was told to shut up... presumably if this judge is still alive cook has interviewed him... if not we are back to "he said yada yada yada". [some judge, btw ...)' You'd be surprised at how uncorrupt the US judiciary is. They often thumb their noses at the govt. and give rulings that are very unfavorable for the govt. Fed judges are appointed for life so they dont have to kiss anyone's butt. If you look at prosecutions of fed judges for bribery/corruption there are only a handfull of cases in the last half century. There are secret federal courts where national security cases are heard and those have been called rubber stamp kangaroo courts where the govt always gets its way, but regular US District Courts are not rubber stamps which grant every govenment request. I'll bet Ckret has stories about fed judges not granting the FBI a search warrant or something else needed for an investigation. Prosecutors and defense lawyers often get equally pissed at the judges which is a splendid indication of fairness. The idea that a judge would be complicit in covering up a hijacking sounds far fetched to me. I assume that any court proceeding related to Cooper would be in federal court, but maybe that's not correct. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Snowman, I think you could take off with the stairs down, but it would definitely cause a stair to runway contact on rotation. For that reason it wouldn't be in any approved operation list. Even a tiny foreign metal object shed on an active runway can cause a disaster for the next plane whose engines inhale it. Something like this brought down the Concorde in flames. If the stairs were really rigidly attached to the fuselage in their deployed position it might prevent takeoff, but it seems like they can be deflected upwards so I think rotation could be accomplished. I'll bet there is no Boeing document that says takeoff with stairs deployed is OK, even though it can be accomplished. A procedure which damages the aircraft and sheds metal wouldn't likely be tried or approved. Still, perhaps Cooper tried something as simple as lifting the stairs a tiny bit on the ground somewhere which would tell him that takeoff with an open door might be possible. My guess is that the stairs are spring loaded or somehow counterbalanced or upwards biased so you do not need a megamotor to retract them. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Pfarrer may be "all that" but dontcha think he is exagerrating the pelvis popping spine snapping aspects of a jet jump? I made a semi high speed exit from the DC 9 and a REALLY high speed exit once from a throttles to the firewall Herc. There was unstable tumbling for a few seconds but no pelvis popping and spine snapping. Those things happened later that night at WFFC, but that's another story. I can't see how a jumper would ever get any significant contact with wake turbulence, you fall too fast. Look at those tests the FAA did with smoke generators. The tip vortexes linger and fall slowly, far far slower than a jumper. Maybe Pfarrer just takes literary license to juice up the events. Hell, my whuffo friends all think jumping from a jet is hugely scary dangerous and why would someone with an ego want to straighten them out? As I've said before night , bad weather and bad terrain below changes everything, but just jumping from a DC 9 or 727 is not a huge deal. Somewhere there is an online edition of the C 7 airdrop manual. It is HUGELY detailed. If the military used 727s for airdrops, somewhere there is documentation with flight manual supplement inserts, checklists, charts, etc. Maybe it is classified, but the military has manuals for everything they do with airplanes. They dont just say: go out and drop some stuff. I am really wondering if Galen has solved the case. He sure seems confident so I'd venture he has something that he thinks proves the Cooper link. I guess we will just have to wait and see. You'd have to give Ckret some profiling kudos if this pans out. He thought there had to be a local miliary base connection and Wolfgang had the Ft Lewis ties. He also thought Cooper was not an experienced jumper and convinced me to think that way. Wolfgang had major relevant jump experience. Nobody wants Galen to be the hero because he is apparently kinda obnoxious. If he solved the case we have to put aside our jealousies and give the man some major respect. If not, we get to play on this forum until it is solved. Has Galen made any public explanation of the riverbank money find? 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Snowman, You and Sluggo have bigger memory buffers and higher processing power than my head has. I need a cerebral processor upgrade! I totally agree with you, sounds like air drop test info. If it was a safety of flight issue it would have been disseminated to all operators and included in all flt manuals. The landing flap setting says (to me) preplanned operation, not accidental door opening scenario. Somewhere I read about a guy who claimed to have made HALO jumps on behalf of Uncle Sam from 727s. Just can't find it. Maybe it was fiction from Navy Seals book. The author claims SEALs are trained to jump from commercial jets. See below: "EYE FOR DETAILS In taut prose with an eye for edgey details, Pfarrer's book leads the reader through the hell of SEAL training. The story is aided by the fact that Pfarrer's post-SEAL career is that of a screenwriter whose credits include the films "Red Planet," "Hard Target," "Virus," "Darkman," "The Jackal" and "Navy SEALS," among others. His writing background distinguishes "Warrior Soul" from the macho bombast found in other SEAL genre books. It's a page-turner which captures a SEAL commando's mindset with a cinematic sense of drama and carefully-honed details. One learns the hazards of having your spine snap or having your hips pop out of your pelvis from such a feat in the wash of the jet's engine. You learn that SEALs may jump out of commercial jets flying over hostile territory -- Cuba, Libya, Syria -- because the enemy isn't expecting that sort of "D. B. Cooper" infiltration. SEALs pack up to 150 lbs. of equipment and jump from heights of 35,000 feet on oxygen, drifting 20 miles to their targets, or from as low as 2,000 feet. Pfarrer notes that his last jump with the SEALs -- one of 300 -- ended with his parachute failing to open at 500 feet, falling at 176 mph on his last night in the service. If you want to learn how he survived the jump, check out the book." I think Boeing did the 727 tests for Uncle Sam. In 1971 VERY few knew about the tests. Cooper knew something about it, perhaps not privvy to the whole test results (as evidenced by his ordering a stairs down takeoff) , but he knew you could fly with the door open and stairs down. Not even the pilots of the NWA 727 knew this. Maybe those C 22s were bought for special missions. Maybe they just flew pax as a cover when not being used for special ops stuff. It is odd but not unprecedented for the military to buy just a couple of some kind of plane for regular service. It is very inefficient from a logistics standpoint: big investment in servicing, spares inventories, training etc. All that takes a ton of work and money which is nuts if you only have a few of the planes in your fleet. I didnt even know the military had 727s until I looked on Google. It is an odd purchase because they had so many other planes in the fleet that could do the same pax hauling job. None of those "other" planes, however, could masquerade as ailiners and had jumpable ventral doors. 377 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

This CATAIR Super G Connie has no radar nose, so it's an old photo for sure, but the gear says that too. Can you imagine what it costs to fly a Connie now with avgas around $5 a gallon? Consider yourself very lucky to have jumped from one and paid only 2-3x a normal jump. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Howard, Your collection of rare propliner jumpships is downright amazing. Even Air Britain's Peter Marson, who is the undisputed top Connie historian, doesn't know about this Connie jump event. I hope you will post an album online. I know you are saving them for the Skydiving Museum, but don't make us propliner junkies wait that long. I made a donation to the museum, so give us a peek. Mark 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Galen sure picked an odd paper to launch his story. This Depoe Bay Beacon paper tries to look like the scandal sheets... you know, the ones in the supermarket checkout stands that feature half breed alien babies and Brittney's latest antics. My girlfriend pretends that I am just a stranger in line ahead of her when I read one of them. If "Wolfgang" Gosset turns out to be Cooper then we really have to give Galen the credit he deserves because this guy wasn't on our lists. Galen sure seems to be sticking his neck out pretty far if he doesn't have solid evidence. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

The military did have a few 727s (called C 22s). I have done a lot of reading and can find no evidence of the military ever using 727s for dropping anything. They were used to haul people, just like the airlines did. Boeing did the flight tests with stairs deployed. The purpose is still subject to dispute. Some say it was a safety issue to see what would happen if a passenger accidently opened the rear door in flight. I don't buy it. The information was not published in any airline flight manuals which have almost all their content from Boeing. Others say the US govt commissioned the flight tests to see if they could do covert airdrops from planes flying as airliners over countries of interest. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

From what I have been able to find, in 1971 very few people knew that a 727 airstair door could be safely opened in flight. None of the four 727 pilots/FEs I have corresponded with knew it before the Cooper hijack. Boeing had done flight tests on inflight door deployment and documented them, but didnt publicize them or include the results in flight manuals. Don Kirlin, the man who puts on WFFC, fought the FAA for a long time to get approval for skydiving from a 727. He went to Boeing for data and they didn't want to provide it but he eventually got it. He didn't respond to my queries but Snowman can extract useful data where others, including me, draw blanks. I think Cooper had access to Boeing info indicating that the 727 could fly safely with the door open. He had to know, otherwise capture was nearly certain. He wasn't so dumb as to just guess that it could be opened. He knew speeds, the necessity for unpressurized flight, right altitude to avoid hypoxia but still give sufficient terrain clearance. He had obviously done some research. Galen may be offensive to some, but I seriously doubt if he'd fake evidence. He could lose his bar card and that's his meal ticket. The risk/reward ratio argues against such mischief. Lawyers who are crooked usually have a disciplinary record with the state bar. As far as I can tell, Galen is squeaky clean in that area. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Anybody remember WFFC (2004?) when skip brought N26MA to Rantoul? That was sure fun. I was on one load when a tall young readheaded girl jumper came up to the cockpit and asked the pilots: "will you give us some extra altitude if I take my top off?" I wont say what happened but...we exited well over 15K. I have never been that high in a DC3 since. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

Ckret wrote: "The funds that were given to Cooper were not pulled from their circulating cash but from a security fund that was prepackaged for these types of incidents." Wouldn't a bank be losing a lot of interest keeping a big bundle of cash like this? Did the govt compensate banks for doing this (having a ready ransom cash stash)? Did the FBI have after hours bank contact info? Did they have a list of banks that had these "security funds"? If the money was lost does the govt compensate the bank or its insurers for the loss? 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

I once made a C 130 high speed exit at well over 200 knots. I tumbled wildly and I mean W I L D L Y. A better jumper could have stayed stable, but I'd bet heavily that Cooper did what I did. It is very disorienting. At night in cold rainy weather it would be far far worse. When I jumped the DC 9-21 at WFFC there was a very small but perceivable acoustic pressure blip as each jumper exited. Sort of a whoosh. Could have just been a bump of slipstream air deflected back into the opening as the jumpers transitioned from the hull to outside. Not sure of the explanation, but I could have been blindfolded and been able to accurately count the exits. Any other jet jumpers concur? 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

That jet snags windsurfer video is fake, but it sure looks cool. Ever see a video of the Fulton Recovery System tested on HC 130 USAF Rescue Hercs? They would snag nylon a line held aloft by a Helium balloon and attached to the harness of a guy standing on the ground. The rope stretches and the guy gets a soft launch almost straight up in the beginning then transitions into a towed-behind mode and is winched into the tailgate. Pretty amazing. Initial snatch force looks really mild. 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

There will be a 4 day boogie this summer at Perris Valley DZ in CA with DC 9 jet jumps. All the speculation about tensile strengths of suspension cord, breaking scenarios, etc. can easily be tested. Start thinking of an ideal test jump to resolve some of these issues. Come to Perris. I'll bet you'd have a dozen volunteers just for the price of a jet jump ticket, provided that the test is safe for the jumper and doesn't endanger others. Being the last to exit the jet minimizes a lot of those issues. Lt Diver, are you up for being the test jumper? 2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.