Robert99

I don't know what Yeager was flying in Wolfes' book, but he was flying an F-104 with a rocket boost engine in real life.

JT, To repeat, I have NEVER said that the weather was clear the night of the hijacking. And I have NEVER called Ralph or you a "lier" (or "liar" either). So what is the post number where you claim that statement was made? I would like to say that the I have NOT been mistaken in stating that the weather the night of the hijacking was as stated by the FAA in Seattle before the airliner took off for Reno, by the FBI weather data as stated for Orchards, by the Weather Underground web site, and other sources. Would you like to say that you have been mistaken?

Never said he was a pilot, although in some of the pictures he sent to his family, he is wearing a captain's hat. He was a go-fer on Shemya for five years and then became a purser later. Ever NWA crew member would probably be instructed in how to open all entrances and exits as a part of their initial training on the 727. And that includes pursers.

JT, I have NEVER claimed that the weather was clear on the day of the hijacking! In fact, all reliable weather sources indicate that there was an overcast at 5000 feet and three broken cloud layers below that. HOWEVER, I have stated that there was no storm in the Portland area and, basically, it was just routine Oregon/Washington weather that night.

and to add: was not the rear door cracked (partially open) upon tackoff from SEA, as per Cooper's request. Stairs not out/down but rear door cracked. ? Once the rear door is opened (fully) then what happens to the pressure inside the cabin? Are we correct in assuming the area immediately behind the aircraft is a low pressure area - lower than inside the cabin? Georger, With the stairs closed and the rear door to the pressure hull open, the cabin pressure would be essentially the same as the free stream static pressure as the aircraft climbed to 10,000 feet. That is, the "cabin altitude" will be essentially what is shown on the pilot's altimeter. When the stairs are lowered, the disturbances in the air flow will cause some slight change to the static pressure in the cabin but it will be essentially the same, if not exactly the same, as the static pressure in the "dead air" area. Nature abhors a vacuum and the cabin pressure will attempt to equalize with any other pressure that it is exposed to.

Sorry, Georger. No I didn't realize pressure issues remained. I thought you just accepted me saying that the pressure inside the plane was essentially just the outside air pressure. That is, "static" or still-air pressure. You mentioned ram pressure and airstream flow at the rear, so I'll address them. First, if the plane had a big hole in the nose as it flew along, this would be a path for air to be rammed into the plane as a result of the plane flying through the air. Assuming the rest of the plane was closed off, this would raise the pressure inside the plane. The whole plane would be acting like a big pitot tube facing into the airflow. That does not apply to the hijack situation because there wasn't that big hole up front. So, neither does ram air pressure. The airstair hanging down in back would be the main cause of pressure drop when the stairs dropped. If it were just the open hole back at the airstairs the air flow would be almost parallel to the hole opening. At the speed of the plane (well subsonic), and because of the streamlining of the aft end of the plane, the pressure drop produced would be very small compared to the static pressure. The aft end of the plane is sort of a flattened cone. The airflow would very closely follow the contour of the fuselage. The pressure drop would be most like the pressure drop caused by air passing by the static pressure pitots on the plane. Essentially zero drop. When you drop the stairs, the stairs project out into the airflow. A vacuum is created on the downstream side. It's like, when driving a station wagon with the near-vertical rear end, a vacuum is created behind the car. And a semi rig going down the hiway makes a big vacuum behind the trailer. Still the vacuum caused by dropping the stairs is not very large, for two reasons: the stairs are sloped (not perpendicular to the air flow); and the frontal surface of the stair is rounded. And the vacuum immediately aft of the stairs does not just travel up to the cockpit. In the flight test, dropping the stair produced a little drop seen on instrumentation but not big enough that occupants noticed it. Speak up if you need more. I know R99 can answer such questions if he wants to. Hominid, A few comments. Instead of the term "vacuum", I would use "reduced pressure" since there is not going to be a "vacuum" adjacent to an aircraft in the altitude and speed range that we are discusssing. "Total Pressure" exists at a "stagnation point" on the leading edge of a wing, the vertical and horizontail stabilizers, or somewhere on the nose cone of the aircraft. I personally would distinguish between "stagnation points" and simple "dead air" points. A few eons ago, when flying my little Cessna in a very light rain, a "dead air" area would become visible when raindrops would actually stop in a very small area on the centerline of the windshield adjacent to the engine cowling. This area was only about 10 square inches but the airstream sweep the rest of the windshield clear of raindrops. [While this area may technically have been a "stagnation point", I would still prefer to call it "dead air".] "Static pressure" is the pressure perpendicular to the free airstream velocity vectors. In the simplest versions, static pressure and total pressure are measured on the same pitot-static probe. But for various reasons these pressures may be measured at widely different points on an aircraft. In the higher performing aircraft, a great deal of work goes into doing everything possible to minimize, and hopefully completely eliminate, the "position error" for the static and total pressure probes. By the time the airflow gets to the rear of the aircraft, the layer of air immediately adjacent to the structure has transitioned from a "laminar" to a "turbulent" boundary layer. This change is what puts the dust on the rear window of your station wagon when you drive down a dirt road. You can see the same process behind cars when driving down the highway when it is raining. The static pressure in this "dead air" region is about the same as the pressure would be in the station wagon if the rear window was partially open. But a few more feet behind these vehicles the free stream air would be moving in, the local air situation would be mixing things up, and the atmosphere would be returning to a normal situation.

JT, If at all possible, check in Canada as well. This type of information may not have been automatically exchanged between the US & Canada in that time frame.

Blevins, The paper bag mystery is of little consequence. He either threw it out or took it with him. What was in it? No one is going to find out at this point. On the Sky Chef matter. Sky Chef prepared inflight meals. In the 1960s and early 1970s, a small package of four cigarettes was routinely included with dinner service. The cigarettes were packaged by their manufacturer. However, I don't remember ever seeing matches prepared by a cigarette company. So it would be natural for Sky Chef to also provide matches just as it was natural for Sky Chef to provide napkins with their meals. It would also be natural for Sky Chef to provide matches for people who had their own cigarettes and just needed a light. It is very likely that Sky Chef included extra matches which were given to the FAs for just such people. Maybe Cooper had flown within the previous day, had a meal onboard, and saved the matches and cigarettes. Or maybe a non-smoking passenger had given him theirs and he also saved them. Didn't he smoke exactly eight cigarettes? Flight 305 probably had a meal served somewhere between Minneapolis and Portland. So maybe the matches and cigarettes were already onboard at Portland.

Hominid, Several people on this thread have been unable to determine the exact flight instrumention that was installed on NWA N467US, Boeing 727-051 model, which was delivered in early 1965. However, it appears to have been just basic instrumentation including a RMI, HSI, and a state-of-the-art Attitude Indicator which did not have any Flight Director capabilities. If you run across the precise NWA 727 instrumentation please post it to this thread.

Do you have any thoughts as to the reason for the difference? Maybe 70 isn't old enough? At 70+ I do have a few years on you. And by a very wierd coincidence, I have another birthday coming up next Thanksgiving day. That will be the 40th anniversary of what?

Hominid, I don't want to pile on but I am quite a bit older than you and Farflung has never insulted me.

And what precisely do you want the money to show? What should it show? What would be nice to have it show? Compared with the placard... The money is what it is = Cooper money for sure, but the controversy of where it spent the 1971-80 years is still up for grabs. Did Kaye do credible tests on the spectro scale? I don't know. Did Kaye have a large enough sample or was he able to compare the small number of FBI bills with the much larger distribution of the rest of the bills to isolate contamination issues at that point? I don't know. I looked at high resolution images of the money Brian Ingram was auctioning off. I am a WHUFFO but I see oxidation, bug and/or bacteria damage. I'd really like to know what Tom Kaye saw in the spectro analysis. I do not know what the placard can tell us. Just be patient a bit longer, keep the faith, and your questions will be answered.

Jerry, Has Ralph offered an opinion as to what caused the Reno accident?

377, The elevator trim tab breaking off would not cause the aircraft to pull 21Gs, and the the wing spar and everything else would have failed long before things got past about 10-12Gs. Did you see the pictures where the tail wheel was not retracted? Also, the cockpit was clearly visible in some of the pictures and there was no sign of the pilot. I'll wait for the report from the investigators but I'll bet there were several problems that figured into the accident.

The pressure is basically the "static" pressure. The actual would be only a tiny bit less because of a slight vacuum being pulled by the airflow past the back. I think I have calculated the static pressure, but it's readily available and easily calculated. R99 I'm sure has done it. You can make it pretty accurated by accounting for the -12C°, almost 100% R.H. and the fact that the S.L. normalized atmospheric pressure in the area was a bit above "standard." But, the pressure is really not relevant. Reason: The guage of significance was the cabin rate of climb guage (like the transcript says). For normal rates of pressure change in the cabin, this guage responds proportional to pressure change rate. In effect, a differentiator. Basically, it is a very sensitive anaeroid barometer with a tiny (but calibrated) hole in the bellows. The pressure inside is constantly trying to adjust to the pressure outside. It responds big time to any sudden change because it doesn't have time enough to adjust in the midst of the change. Because of the normal decay and delay time, you can calculate just how sensitive it is in comparison to the cabin pressure guage. I don't remember the exact ratio, but its probably at least two orders of magnitude. So, no matter what the atmospheric pressure (for normal earthly use), suddenly increase the pressure 5% and the guage will give the same BANG. It could easily be like peggin electrical meters with to-big inputs.Quote Hominid, You are correct about the cabin pressure (or altitude) gage being the only one of interest in the stair opening/closing issue. The flight instruments for the pilots operate off independent static/dynamic pressure systems that have nothing to do with the cabin pressure. A couple of years ago I did do an analysis of the atmospheric DENSITY in the Portland area at the time the airliner was passing through. The only result was that the DENSITY was about 2 percent above the standard density for a 1966 Standard US Atmosphere. At the relatively low speed at which the airliner was traveling, and the fact that the cabin pressure was only affected by the rear stairs being opened, the cabin pressure can be assumed to be about the same as the ambient pressure. Or to put it another way, the cabin absolute pressure (or altitude) would be about the same as the altitude indicated on the pilots altimeters corrected for the above standard sea level pressure that those altimeters were set to. About a month ago, 377 had some very interesting posts on this thread about his experiences in jumping out of the rear stairway (with the stairs removed) of DC-9s. 377 said that he could feel and hear pressure variations and noises ever time a skydiver went out that door. Perhaps 377 is the one to talk to about this "bumping and thumping".

Jo, Just solve the damn Cooper case and get it over with! Then I for one can get on to more serious matters like searching for Amelia.

And why do you assume that "he" was Cooper? The (GC) was often "Al" because the person hearing the comms couldn't always tell who he was hearing. The "(GC)" was Al telling someone else around there (like ARTCC) that "he" the pilot wanted to get up. Nobody said who "he" was. Like, "the guy in back." (source: Hominid) They probably did level off because Coop wanted to get the stairs down. That doesn't mean he requested it. It's very likely the crew just wanted to be able to concentrate on that little chore. I'll try to figure out what the rest means and get back to ya. I think there are two "he's". I think in the first instance one GC is talking to another referring to the pilot. One "Ground Control says NW 305 wants to go to altitude as fast as "he" can. Immediately afterwards (on the pdf) another GC replies okay. The next "he" is 305 referring to Cooper as in "he wants the steps down" That's my assumption

I'm inclined right now to think they had to turn the hydraulics off. Reason: Coming into Reno 305 said they needed to make a wide sweeping turn. I haven't checked it, but I don't believe their speed would have been low enough that the bank would have dropped lift enough to put them near stall speed (in a near empty condition). Maybe R99 will check that out. Hominid, Welcome to the Cooper thread. One of your earlier comments was something along the line that you were one of the original geeks and nerds. This may be true or it may be a false claim. But before I take offense, exactly how many years have you been a nerd? Now down to business. On the matter of the weight of the aircraft when it landed in Reno. In Seattle, all the cargo stayed onboard. The passengers and two FAs were released but their luggage stayed on board, except for one passenger who reboarded the aircraft to get his briefcase. The airplane apparently did not have a full load of fuel but was close to having a full fuel load. The airliner took off from Seattle at between 7:30 and 7:35 PM PST and landed about 11:00 PM PST in Reno. Presumably, it would have had at least 30 to 45 minutes of fuel on board when it landed since the flight crew did not indicate any concerns with their fuel situation. So the fuel load was decreased by the approximate 3:30 hours of flying and Cooper's jump decreased the weight by another 225 to 250 pounds. When the airliner was about 17 DME miles south of Seattle, they told the controller that they were leveling off momentairly because Cooper was having trouble getting the stairs down. And they slowed down the aircraft for a couple of minutes to help Cooper. If my memory is correct, they also stated that they were having trouble climbing with the stairs down and the flap and landing gear configuration that they had. Other than that, there is nothing in the Seattle ATC radio transcripts to indicate that they were having trouble controlling the aircraft. However, when the airliner got into the Okland ATC area, the Oakland controller told the flight crew something like "I understand that you can not make a standard rate turn (that would be a two minute turn)". The flight crew confirmed that they could not make such a turn. During subsequent exchanges, the flight crew indicated that they were having trouble descending and said that they would prefer a 300 FPM descent with 500 FPM at the outside. They also indicated that they would need plenty of time to get things set up for the Reno landing. On the approach to the runway in Reno, the crew decided that they could not descend fast enough and made a 360 degree turn in order to get into a better position for landing. And then they landed. The Oakland controller is the one who initiated the discussion about their turning and descent problems. This means that someone called him and told him of the problem but there is no record of this in the transcripts. From other sources, maybe the FBI notes, I understand that Al called Reno and told them what to expect when the aircraft landed there. So maybe it was Al or the Seattle controllers who passed the word about the control problems to the Oakland controller. The target airspeed throughout the flight seems to have been 170 KIAS, which was their best range speed for that particular configuration. R99

Art Inmates Life - you are talking in code and I am READING you. Go Ahead! Let it Blow! I am Ready! TO ALL:

Jo, Your "CODE" is pure baloney and you have been told that by people on this thread. You are now claiming that you have not seen the letter that included the numbers you claim are code? Didn't you or maybe some else post that letter to this thread?

Robert Stated: Jo SMILES!

Jo, Were you the one who made the offer?

Jo, You are the one trying to replace facts with myths! According to an entry at 10:35 PM PST in the Oakland Center's radio transcripts, Captain Scott tells the Reno tower controller that they are trying to contact Cooper to get the steps up. Earlier they had informed Cooper (or at least tried to) that damage to the stairs in landing at Reno might mean that they couldn't takeoff from there. No sparks were seen in the landing at Reno. As the aircraft was taxiing to the ramp, the tower did see some sparks from the stairs dragging on the taxiway and reported this to the flight crew at 11:03PM PST. The damage caused by the stairs dragging on the taxiway was very minor as can be seen from the photograph on Sluggo's web page. You apparently consider the "journalists" to be better witnesses than the Reno tower controllers. Again, you are the one who has been interested only in "useless Trivia" and continually ignore eyewitness accounts such as the Reno tower controllers. And you continue to try to bury Cooper in so much Duane garbage in an apparent effort to prevent Cooper from being found. Get real!

Orange, I think you and Occam are both right on this point.

If I interpret this correctly one result would be far more communication and direct action (by some means) between Cooper and the cockpit possibly thru Tina? None of this interplay is made explicit in the transcripts. Gray's book develops some of it - We know he got out of the plane, by some means. We also know a reporter on the scene at Reno reported 'some damage' to the air stairs after landing - whether this damage is consistent with Homonid's speculation is uncertain ? Does it follow, that getting the door open and stairs down relied more on the crew than on Cooper or Cooper's knowledge or skills personally than previously thought - because we know Cooper had trouble and we now know crew intervention was required. ? A couple of dumb questions. With the above scenario, what light (if any) on the Flight Engineer's panel would illuminate (as was claimed by the flight crew) when the stairway slammed shut momentarily after Cooper jumped? In the FBI re-enactment using the very same airplane, how did they put the stairway down and did the same light on the FE's panel illuminate when they dropped the weights and the door reportedly slammed shut just as it did when Cooper jumped? An additional question for bonus points. Does the flight crew and/or the FBI have some further explaining to do on this matter?