Robert99

Tina's story about the match books is probably completely true. In the 1971 time frame, Skychef provided meal service for numerous airlines (probably most of them) and included cigarettes (a small pack of four) and a small book of matches with each meal. Skychef undoubtedly provided their airline customers with plenty of those matches for anyone who needed a match. Somewhere a few years ago, if my memory is correct, Tina indicated that Cooper's original small book of matches was from a small school that advertised such things as GED courses and similar things. It was basically a mail in type school that advertised extensively on small match books similar to the Skychef match books. I don't remember exactly when smoking was stopped on the airlines but it was probably in the mid-1970s.

In the 1950s era, I am fairly sure the repack interval was 60 days for everything except maybe a "chair" parachute which may have had a longer repack interval. Somewhere in the 1960s or so (basically the time frame that the new para-commanders came on the scene), and as newly designed and manufactured civilian parachutes started hitting the market for emergency parachutes usage, studies were made of the required repack intervals and those intervals were increased in several steps. The repack interval for modern civilian emergency parachutes may be as long as 6 months at the present time.

OleMiss, THERE WAS NO NB-6 PARACHUTE INVOLVED IN THE COOPER HIJACKING! That is the whole story right there! Just ignore everything that Cossey claimed! Why are you so obsessed with this?

FlyJack, thanks for the information. The T-28A was indeed in civilian hands in the 1960s and was fully acrobatic. When it was used in military pilot training by the USAF and Navy I believe it was the second military aircraft that the trainees would encounter. I don't remember what the initial aircraft the USAF trainees encountered but I think it was the Beech T-34 that the Navy trainees flew. The T-28A could accommodate both seat and backpack parachutes and didn't need a thin backpack such as the NB-6 or NB-8. This is another reason why there was no point in Hayden paying two or three times as much for an NB-6 as he paid for the parachute that is now at the WSHM. I knew a fellow who owned a T-28A in the early 1960s but never got a ride in it. While in the military, I did get some flying time as a passenger in the DeHavilland beaver. Thanks again.

Does anyone know what type of aerobatic aircraft Hayden owned?

Let's not make a federal case out of this but take a look at the card in FlyJack's post #63951. The heading for the column where "I & R" is listed is "Repairs and : or Remarks". The word repack is not mentioned but is undoubtedly included in the "I & R" service.

As Dudeman17 has already pointed out, there will be just one packing card per rig. Not a single one for two rigs. If one rig has been repacked more times than there are lines on one card to record the packings, then there may be two cards for historical purposes in the pocket, but they would apply to one single rig.

Packing cards are for the ENTIRE RIG, canopy, container, harness, pilot chute, rip cord, and any attachments. That "I & R" stands for "Inspect & Repair". The rigger is responsible for certifying that the entire rig is airworthy.

No.

OleMiss, you don't seem to understand that both of Hayden's parachutes are being discussed here plus Gruder's. If you actually have an NB-6 rig, open it up and take a look at the construction of the risers and canopy. Then you should be able to understand why it can be packed in a small container. After doing the above, you should also be able to understand why the NB-6 cost about two or three times the amount that a regular 28 foot flat canopy parachute costs. Why would Hayden want one parachute that cost X dollars, such as the museum parachute, and one that would cost 2X or 3X times as much? Further, why are you so obsessed with claiming that an NB-6 was involved in the hijacking? Still further, Chaucer related a while back that someone was going to produce a new analysis of the flight path using some statistical methods. How did that turn out and is it online anywhere?

Riggers don't know what they are doing? You need to take a couple of aspirins, get a good night's sleep, and get an emergency appointment with your shrink in the morning! Download and read (!) the FAA publication on the knowledge requirements, testing requirements, and required equipment for riggers and master riggers. Any rigger who has seen a picture of the WSHM's Hayden parachute will know that it is not an NB-6 or an NB-8. If Cossey owned an NB-6/NB-8 he would use it when flying the jump aircraft which was probably a four place Cessna which did not have seats designed for pilots wearing parachutes. I speak from personal experience about the NB-6 which was quite thin when packed because of the unique construction of the conical canopy and a couple of other factors. It was rated as having the same descent rate as a flat 28 foot canopy parachute.

Olemiss, I am sticking by my post on this. Have you read the posts on this site related to the parachutes since 2009? Have you read Bruce Smith's interview with Hayden? There were only four parachutes involved here. Two front packs came from Hayden who said they were similar, and two chest packs came from the skydiver operation where Cossey worked. No NB-6 rigs were involved. Cossey may not have even known about the hijacking until the FBI finally got in touch with him. The FBI 302s indicate that they were unable to contact Cossey until early on the morning of Thanksgiving Day by which time the airliner had been on the ground at Reno for several hours. Other than being the rigger who packed the parachutes and assembled the back packs from various military surplus items for Hayden, Cossey apparently did nothing useful to help the FBI. Of course, he did talk to the media.

There is no physical evidence that an NB-6 parachute rig, or any component of an NB-6 rig, was involved in the Cooper hijacking. This nonsense originated in claims made by Cossey but does not have any factual basis. Hayden has said that the two backpacks he passed to the FBI were similar. They were assembled by Cossey from military surplus parts, some of which may have been previously used. The Hayden backpack that is at the WSHM does not have an NB-6 harness, it does not have an NB-6 container, it does not have an NB-6 pilot chute, and it does not have an NB-6 canopy. This can be determined by just looking at the pictures of it. In the 1960-1970 timeframe, I owned a genuine and totally NB-6 emergency parachute rig and wore it when flying certain aircraft that had very cramped cockpits. The NB-6 rigs were several times more expensive than the Hayden backpack rigs. The NB-6 conical parachute canopy has several construction features that are different from other canopies. There are also differences in the NB-6 container and pilot chute construction. I have posted several detailed explanations of these differences here over the last 15 years. The solution to the non-existent Cooper parachute "problem" is simple. JUST IGNORE EVERYTHING THAT COSSEY SAID. Also, I have never seen a military personnel parachute that had a "low speed" rating. If the recently found canopy in North Carolina has such a restriction, then it is probably not a military canopy in the first place.

Georger, Thanks for mentioning The Standard Generalized Theory of Existence on Earth and the information in items 1 and * above. Perhaps some of the newbies here will begin to understand that most Nobel Prize winning physicists agree that water runs downhill, at least in the Portland/Vancouver area. Good work!

Injecting McCoy back into the Cooper hijacking (again!!!!!) is just a publicity stunt. Tina Mucklow and a lot of other people were shown dozens, if not hundreds, of photos of suspects and those undoubtedly included pictures of McCoy. Reportedly, not a single person that had actually seen Cooper identified him as McCoy or even having a close resemblance to McCoy. This is just recycled nonsense. Dream on!

Georger, I am actually surprised that you would finally reveal something like the above! Is there anything else you would like to get off your mind?

Cola, you are 100 percent right. Kenny Christiansen was not Cooper. And it is highly unlikely that any suspect named on this forum or elsewhere was Cooper either.

Georger, you are jumping to conclusions here. What you have stated doesn't support your claims. You just need to stick to facts.

I didn't say the quote that you credit me with saying in a post on 6/17/2024 at 9:37 AM. And I don't know who did.

It is highly unlikely that the flight crew could see the "lights" (meaning the actual streetlights and such) of Portland. There were three cloud layers under the airliner, and they essentially constituted an almost complete undercast. The crew probably meant that they could see the "glow" of the Portland lights through those three cloud layers. The airliner was 10,000 feet higher than Portland and the "glow" would be visible from a considerable distance. I speak from personal experience on this point.

Since Cooper specified the aircraft configuration, the issue was always about fuel. If you read the transcripts of the communications between the aircraft and the technical people in Minneapolis, the crew was only advised when they were in the Portland area that they would have enough fuel to reach Reno. Prior to Portland, the crew had been repeatedly passing fuel consumption and fuel onboard information to MSP.

Georger, don't hold your breath on this. Ulis has Cooper landing on the west side of his new flight path. As he points out, the wind was blowing toward the northeast or north-northeast during the jump. This means that Ulis apparently believes that Cooper drifted upwind and landed upwind from the airliner's flight path. Mother Nature doesn't work that way. His new landing zone is about a mile from Tena Bar but there is something that Ulis apparently doesn't realize or understand the significance of although it has been pointed out to him and everyone else numerous times. The Northwest Lower River Road lies between Tena Bar and the new landing zone. It is built on top of a levee that results in things east of the levee going into the Vancouver Lake drainage area. Things west of the Northwest Lower River Road goes into the Columbia River. I visited the area shown in the video, and marked as the new landing zone, in November 2009. It was farmland and had been recently harvested. Based on the small stubby things (corn stalks?) sticking out of the ground, it appeared that corn was the most recently crop grown there and that the corn (or whatever it was) had been used as feed by the dairy operation just across the road. The above has been endlessly discussed on DZ since about 2009 or early 2010.

Georger, your last two lines have problems. Sluggo was undoubtedly referring to the refueling time at the gate. It would be much shorter and convenient even if a fuel truck was required to pump the fuel from the ground fuel line into the aircraft. Who knows, since the fuel trucks were not normally used at larger airports in 1971 to refuel scheduled airliners, perhaps some of the trucks had to go to the airport fuel facility to load up before going to the NWA airliner out in the brush.

Reportedly, just one line of the update caused today's mess. If five lines of the update were screwed up, would civilization as we know it still exist tonight?

Chaucer has previously posted that he is in contact with CeCe Moore who is a genuine expert in tracking down people through DNA and is affiliated with Parabon (sp.?). Moore has helped law enforcement in hundreds of cases including some which received national media attention. If the Cooper case turns up meaningful DNA then Moore should be consulted and the DNA analysis handled on a professional level.