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quade

DB Cooper

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sky apes and bird turds uh… I mean the parachutist and skydivers out there.



Sluggo, this is the 3rd or 4th time that you have used that or similar phrasing. Is there any particular reason you keep on insulting skydivers as a group?

I don't know about that particular photo btw, but paratroopers are trained to jump with heavy gear. Which is why some of us think Cooper's best chance of surviving the jump (night, weather, load, yada yada yada) would have been if he had been a paratrooper, and trained to jump in lousy conditions with heavy loads.
Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

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Sluggo, this is the 3rd or 4th time that you have used that or similar phrasing. Is there any particular reason you keep on insulting skydivers as a group?



Orange1,

Go back to “DEFCON 3”. If you have read many of my post (and you obviously have) you would be aware that I consider myself a guest on this board and am grateful to be allowed here. Consider it a “term of endearment.”

I had a friend (in Southern California, not far from Perris) who was into hang-gliding and skydiving. My pet name for him was sky-ape. Someone here has a signature line that says something to the effect; “The only things that fall out of the sky are bird turds.”

So, I thought that if I am a whuffo then you are a “sky-ape/bird turd.” I mean no more (or less) by it than you do when you refer to us non-skydivers as whuffos.

Now, we friends again?

Back to the subject at hand:
Were you surprised to see them rigging the Nuke like that? Also, was the chute larger than a 200 lb (with gear) jumper would normally use? Keeping in mind that I am a whuffo, it seems to me that tripling the weight (200 lbs to 600 lbs. total) would stress the equipment considerably.

Sluggo_Monster

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We can go with the idea Cossey, as an experienced rigger, would not have packed a rig with an impossible pull force, that's a reasonable assumption. Plus the fact parachutes that are packed for any amount of time tend to settle down (compress) in the container so I'm not sure all this hard pull stuff in relevant. And a NB-6 has what? Three, or four, ripcord pins? That spreads the pull force out fairly well.

And if Cooper was at all experienced he would have checked the pins. He would have tried to actually move them with his fingers and maybe he even primed them.

But let's say he had no experiences what so ever. I know from experience every new jumper without being told just naturally worries about being able to pull the ripcord. When we taught skydiving with ripcord mains they would always ask how hard to pull is it? And we'd let one student in the class actually pull one. "Oh, that's easy," they'd say to their classmates and that was the end of that worry.

But an untrained Cooper may have been worrying about it. So he'd either leave the plane with his hand already on the handle, or he'd simply walk down to the bottom of the air stairs, turn his back to the void, and pull the ripcord right there, using two hands if needed.

A pull off at that speed might have damaged the canopy but not necessarily, and rounds of that type sometimes do get damaged at high speeds, but they rarely fail completely. So even with some blown out panels he still could have landed all right.

I still hold that no one without previous parachuting experience would do what Cooper did. I don't think he was a very experienced civilian sport jumper as he would have brought a decent and familiar rig on board with him. I think he was a military trooper style jumper who had a handful of jumps spanning a single military hitch and who never did anything but static line jumps.

NickD :)

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A pull off at that speed might have damaged the canopy but not necessarily, and rounds of that type sometimes do get damaged at high speeds, but they rarely fail completely. So even with some blown out panels he still could have landed all right.



"...at that speed". Remember, that speed was not 90mph out of a Cessna. It was 200 mph.

Last November, I dumped at a speed around 140. The harness put the brakes on my frame, but my arms, legs, and head continued for a moment. One arm still gives me problems.

That was with my nice, comfy, slow-opening, 6-month-old, sport main.

So, if he dumped while standing at the bottom of the stairs... the jet was going 200mph. He had a round.

Regardless of the condition of the canopy... realistically, what would that round do to him at 200mph ?

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Flap speeds in a 727, like all airliners depends on among other things, weight, but generally they are anywhere from 180 K down to about 140 K. at that altitude. And I've immediately deployed more than once off aircraft doing 150 K during reserve testing and it wasn't that big deal. And that's a few times with square reserves and once with a round.

And the round Cooper had was a older continuous line type I'd imagine and those are pretty tough. And back in the days before "smart" ejection seats there's been military ejections at all sorts of ungodly speeds that worked.

NickD :)

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And if Cooper was at all experienced he would have checked the pins. He would have tried to actually move them with his fingers and maybe he even primed them.

REPLY> What does it mean to 'prime the pins'.
Pull them out slightly to make sure they are lose
and will eject? .

Also, what of the gear down. Does this create a
wash that would have implications for a rear jump
from a 727?

Thanks, (your experience is valued!)
George

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The information I have regarding Lynden WA gives his (wifes name) and his age. It also references other places I knew they lived. Right now it is being verified.



Well, it seems like this was a wild goose chase - After spending most of the day on the phone and computer - It was another dead end.
Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 2013, 2014, 2015 by Jo Weber

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The information I have regarding Lynden WA gives his (wifes name) and his age. It also references other places I knew they lived. Right now it is being verified.



Well, it seems like this was a wild goose chase - After spending most of the day on the phone and computer - I think it is another DEAD end...not to mention the expenses.



Jo, nobody's holding a gun to your head. If you didn't want to be searching, you wouldn't be. So, complaining about it is kinda silly.
quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

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my old braincells just realized something. ol' coop may have had 2 previously undisclosed pieces of gear with him. Guru ,you can probably back me up on this,BUT there has been NO mention of whether those 2 chest chutes were supplied to the FBI with belly bands!i would assume they were, as the chest packs would have been flopping around WILDLY w/o them. for those who arent familiar with old skydiving gear, a belly band is a piece of webbing around 3 feet long with some variety of snap on each end(b12,b4, quick ejector).it is threaded thru the back of the chest container reinforcing and then hooked to another ring on either the back container "sidewings" or on the harness near the saddle.however if long enough could be routed to anypart of the harness.
Why is this information important,you may ask? well it gives cooper 2 pieces of webbing,at least 6 to 8 feet total length, with parachute harness snaps that could have been used to fasten the money to himself ,and his backpack parachute. the webbing most likely was type8(4000# tensile strength) or type 13(7500 lb ).

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:(:(:(:(




All,

I just received a PM which contained (in part):

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Although you are a guest on these boards, and had a friend who may have jumped with us, it is out of character to use our {Emphasis Sluggo’s} terms (degrading as we may be to each other) in like manner. This -is- a skydiving forum, for skydivers. {Emphasis Sluggo’s} You can call your friend a 'sky-ape'...because he is your friend. It doesn't extend to people you don't know.

So yes, I completely agree with Orange1 that in trying to 'fit in' {Emphasis Sluggo’s}using such terms just comes off as being a jerk {Emphasis Sluggo’s}.

Hope you understand.




Well, I just don’t know what to say…

First, I guess I would like to say; “I’m not trying to “fit in.” I have no need to “fit in.” I have my own interest, my own friends, and my own life. I do not need (or desire) to live it vicariously through yours.

Secondly, I have made some good friends on this board. Believe it or not, they are skydivers. They accept me for what I am (including my sense-of-humor) and what I can contribute to the discussions here. They do not behave like hooded priest, guarding the temple from an onslaught of heathen hoards wanting to capture some of their religious grace. They did encourage me to return to posting last January when another priest told me in no uncertain terms that the un-initiated were not welcome here. And, not once have they referred to me as “a jerk.”

I had hoped to continue participating in the discussions here, and in some way add to the advancement of knowledge in the NORJAK case (one which affects all skydivers). But, alas, it is not to be. I accept all people, and try to treat them with respect and dignity. A courtesy not offered to me here.


The above PM came on the heels of my discovering the posts by Jim_Hooper explaining that I:
  • have a two-digit IQ because I post here

  • am a parasitic wart (who) hasn’t made the first contribution to the sport

  • am a non-too-bright bore (with BO, no less)

  • must be kept away from real skydivers

  • can only be described as a pathetic parasite

  • am in the same class as the check-out lines tabloids

  • am a non-skydiving moron who pollutes this site

  • a dullard

  • a drooling maladroit

  • my contributions’ (inevitably larded with poor grammar, worse syntax, and flabby thinking) are sad efforts to draw attention to myself

  • a swelling pustule and the foreign bodies fermenting therein



That kind of PR campaign will certainly attract newbies to the sport and win the support of the non-skydiving public when housing expansion threatens your DZ. (And there are a LOT more of us than there are of you.)


If anyone cares for my input, you know how to reach me.



Sluggo_Monster

:(:(:(:(

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>>REPLY> What does it mean to 'prime the pins'.
Pull them out slightly to make sure they are lose
and will eject?.
Yes, normally the pin, the actual end of the ripcord, sits in the middle of a metal cone, or sometimes, a soft loop. Priming it would mean moving the pin up so it's not in the middle anymore (see photos.) The first photo is a ripcord pin in its normal seated position. The second photo is the same ripcord now primed.

And while this doesn't lessen the overall pull force, it does lessen the duration of the pull force. Plus once Cooper saw he could move the pins with his fingers he'd know the ripcord was going to move when he needed it.

But, there's another point worth discussing that concerns round parachutes and high speed deployments.

I think you can all understand what the term "reefing" means. It's a mechanical way to slow the opening of either a round or square parachute. And it's not so much to keep them from blowing up; it's more to make the opening more comfortable for sport jumpers.

However, the NB-6 that Cooper used didn't have any reefing system in place. But there is a "natural" reefing that occurs with round parachutes at high speed.

Before we get further into that let's talk about how a round parachute opens in the first place. Most non-jumpers would assume the air rushes into the canopy from the open bottom and that blows the parachute open. Think of it like an umbrella would open in the hands of a falling man.

But round parachutes really doesn't open like that all.

Once they stream out of the back pack and the lines fully extend they will remain closed for a bit until the falling Cooper accelerates the parachute to his speed.

Once this occurs there is a scientific principle (I feel like Mr. Wizard now ;)) that takes place that we can skip right now. Essentially Cooper is now dragging an obstruction (his parachute) through a sea of air molecules. And these air molecules naturally want to stay attached to all the other air molecules. So the ones that are being disturbed by the parachute have to speed up to make up the extra distance they must travel to get around the obstruction (again, the parachute) in order to catch up with the undisturbed air molecules nearby. And this creates an air pressure differential between the outside of the parachute and the inside of the parachute. Okay, let's all go into the kitchen and demonstrate this principal.

Grab a light weight sandwich bag out of a drawer, or if you don't have that, a piece of plastic off your dry cleaning. Fold it over about an inch or two and twist the bottom once and pinch it off with your thumb and forefinger so you have a little unopened parachute. Now put the top part into your mouth and suck on it. Notice how the part in your mouth expands out into a ball? You just recreated what I said in the above paragraph. Without blowing any air into it from the bottom it just wants to expand. But the bottom part doesn't expand because you are holding it closed with your fingers.

In the air the bottom part of the parachute, the open part, doesn't immediately explode open simply because like your fingers, the air molecules are holding it closed and the parachute itself doesn't have to power to push them out of the way. This phenomenon is even more prevalent at higher speeds. So in reality a round parachute opens from the top down and not the bottom (the "skirt") up.

But now the expanding top part of the parachute (called the apex) plus the drag of entire parachute assembly is beginning to slow Cooper down. So even if he deployed at 200 Knots he wouldn’t open at that speed. The parachute and Cooper would slow down before the canopy actually opened. All in all this is called "Squidding" and all round parachutes have this natural self defense system. If they didn’t they would blow up or sustain damage all the time.

Some of you may have seen the coverage of the testing of the parachute for both the Rovers that are currently on Mars. They had what they called a wind tunnel failure on the first test but what happened was the parachute was squidding but in the wind tunnel the constant velocity wind didn’t allow the parachute to slow down enough to open. If they would have dialed the wind speed down, at the point the parachute began to squid, and like would occur naturally, it would have worked. And it scared me how much some non-jumping engineers know about parachutes.

Now one final note on damage and round parachutes. The older military type round parachute Copper used was a bit different than those used by sport jumpers when round reserves were still popular. On a modern sport round the lines terminate at the bottom of the canopy. They are actually sewn into place at that point on the skirt. The military canopies have continues lines. In other words a line that began at Coopers harness ran up and into the canopy itself - then over the top of the parachute and down the other side and back down to Coopers harness. Every line did this. This makes for a very strong canopy.

Now if you laid one of these parachutes out flat on the ground you'd see it's built like a pie. It is basically a bunch of wedge shape pie slices all sewn together. And you can blow out several of these wedges and still land the parachute all right. In fact the more holes you blow in it the more turbulence it creates and this actually slows the decent of the canopy even further. That's why modern sport round main canopies are chock full of holes that are built in. The only thing you can't do is get a skirt to apex split but that happens more with lightweight sport rounds than military type rounds . . .

NickD :)

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my old braincells just realized something. ol' coop may have had 2 previously undisclosed pieces of gear with him. Guru ,you can probably back me up on this,BUT there has been NO mention of whether those 2 chest chutes were supplied to the FBI with belly bands!i would assume they were, as the chest packs would have been flopping around WILDLY w/o them. for those who arent familiar with old skydiving gear, a belly band is a piece of webbing around 3 feet long with some variety of snap on each end(b12,b4, quick ejector).it is threaded thru the back of the chest container reinforcing and then hooked to another ring on either the back container "sidewings" or on the harness near the saddle.however if long enough could be routed to anypart of the harness.
Why is this information important,you may ask? well it gives cooper 2 pieces of webbing,at least 6 to 8 feet total length, with parachute harness snaps that could have been used to fasten the money to himself ,and his backpack parachute. the webbing most likely was type8(4000# tensile strength) or type 13(7500 lb ).



I think you are right with respect to the likely presence of belly bands.

However, I think he would have had trouble removing the belly bands from the chest packs. I'm looking at a T-10R, and there is exactly enough room under the Type-6 webbing on the back of the pack to route a flat piece of Type-8, -7, or -13. Not enough room to pull a snap through. So the snap would have to be unthreaded (or cut, if the end was folded and sewn, instead of seared, split, and sewn).

Some sport chest packs had Type-17 (1") belly bands with alligator clips. The clips needed to be only strong enough to hold the pack in place during a style set or while the reserve deployed. If the reserve deployed, the large QAC snaps would take the load, not the alligator clips.

I'm not familiar with NB-6 or NB-8, so maybe there is some place a belly band could hook. I don't think you could hook one end to the other. I don't see the advantage to tying a knot in webbing instead of using parachute cord to secure the money bundle.

Mark

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What I see is a bunch of smart folks that recently came back to this thread. I'm amazed and see that as a pretty warm, friendly gesture. Thank you to all the jumpers that have recently come back here.

A little PM about your phraseology, is nothing. Suck it up. You'll stay because useful info appears here, not because someone kisses your ass. (like everyone..say Jo!)

In other social groups that share similar ties, the difference of opinion probably would have been resolved with a fist in the face. And then everyone would grab a beer and move on.

Hey here's a interesting factoid on alias selection I found in wikipedia:
"On April 15, 1995 Timothy McVeigh rented a Ryder truck in Junction City, Kansas under the alias Robert D. Kling, an alias he adopted because he had known a soldier named Kling with whom he shared physical characteristics, and because it reminded him of the Klingon warriors of Star Trek."

(I was comparing yield of a MK-54 SADM to the OK bombing...and thought the Kling thing was interesting compared to our musings about the use of "Cooper")

I've also been wondering about how much parachute/skydiving knowledge was available in books/magazines in '71. I'm wondering if Cooper might have had zero jump experience and just read up on things. Did you really have to "know" someone to get jump knowledge back then? I've got a picture of someone doing their first jump off El Cap. (no prior jump of any kind before)...Early '80s (I can scan it if NickD is curious). It looks like a hand deploy. Apparently the story was he got instruction in the parking lot. How would that pucker factor compare to Cooper's?

It's always made me wonder about claims of "a little" prior jump experience with Cooper. I'm wondering why people say that: pucker factor? or some of the actions (like 10k ft request, flaps etc)

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I think he was a military trooper style jumper who had a handful of jumps spanning a single military hitch and who never did anything but static line jumps.



Hm, that does bring another angle to the paratrooper theory of course, and one that I hadn't thought of - whether or not you are right about the # of jumps, most "normal" paratroopers, even with many jumps, would only have done SL jumps (perfectly logical for 1000' or lower altitudes). I have no idea how many people would have been trained in HALO type jumps by the early 70s??

Nick, I am also interested -in why you think he only had a handful of jumps? Is it fair to say that a paratrooper of age in that era may well have seen a fair amount of combat/"real" jumps as opposed to just training jumps? Do we (by which I mean do you :)) have any idea what the average # of jumps someone that saw a tour of duty may have done all in all?

p.s. ... great post about rounds :)
Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

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Yes, scan it for me.

While there are plenty of people who've made their first B.A.S.E. jumps at El Cap, I've never heard of anyone making a first parachute jump there. But I won't say more until I see the "photo."

On reading up on parachuting enough to be actually do it, there were several books in print at that time, but I wouldn't consider them "How to Books."

But he could have "learned enough" to convince himself he could do it. On the practical side with real first jump students you have to explain even the simplest things numerous times before they get it, and even then, you worry they don't really get it.

It would be like never having snow skied and reading a book about ski jumping - big wreck coming!

NickD :)

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On reading up on parachuting enough to be actually do it, there were several books in print at that time, but I wouldn't consider them "How to Books."

But he could have "learned enough" to convince himself he could do it. On the practical side with real first jump students you have to explain even the simplest things numerous times before they get it, and even then, you worry they don't really get it.

It would be like never having snow skied and reading a book about ski jumping - big wreck coming!



That brought a smile:)
Ice-skating: Duane just took off doing his thing as soon as he re-aquainted himself with the iceskates. Me - I never did manage to stand on my own - and my daughter faired pretty well.

Skiing: Again Duane knew what he was doing and took off. I went out with the children - for a lesson - spent more time in the snow than I did on it.:$

Snowmobiling: Duane was in front of me - and he was flying. I was keeping up and did just fine. He is the one who crashed and rolled, but he was not hurt. He said he had done lots of snowmobiling.:o

By the way, Duane's favorite expression - when he did something that showed a unique talent. "I just read up on it".

Nick, thanks for the memories.:)
Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 2013, 2014, 2015 by Jo Weber

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if you have never had experience with belly bands ,i can understand you saying that there isntenough room for the snaps under those webbing pieces, but i have done it and it can be done. BUT mostly people "back in the day" just ran the belly band thru the handles on each end of the container(yes there used to be a webbing loop or handle at each end of the container,on a t7a or t10 reserve or a.f chest pack)i have seen some w/ just one handle, but mostly at the time of coopers caper,they had 2. of course, if it was a sport manufactured reserve container, the belly band was sewn into the container.

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The belly bands not only went through the fabric handles they went behind the elastic pack opening bands (POBs) too.

I didn't think about Cooper having the two belly bands, nice catch, nitrochute . . . and we can also add the POBs (at least 2 per reserve container, some containers had more.) And all of those things are easily removable from their respective containers and a MacGyver type could have a field day with them.

I was always luke warm to Cooper using the suspension lines to tie the money to him, and here's the first good alternative I've heard.

So the next question is how many of those six items were left in the aircraft?

NickD :)

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Yes, scan it for me.

While there are plenty of people who've made their first B.A.S.E. jumps at El Cap, I've never heard of anyone making a first parachute jump there. But I won't say more until I see the "photo."



Magazine is a now-defunct UK climbing/mountaineering magazine called "Mountain"
Number 99. Sept./Oct. 1984.
pages 33 thru 37. title: "Cliffing" by Randy Leavitt.
has color photos of jumps by Randy Leavitt, Rob Slater, Robin Heid, and text article.
Jumps: Painted Wall, (Black Canyon) and El Cap.

Page 36 has the two B/W pictures attached.
Caption says "Brett Maurer, having dispensed with the formality of a preliminary jump from an aircraft, makes his first ever parachute jump from the top of El Capitan.
2nd caption: Two seconds later Maurer surveys the landing site.

The date of the jump isn't included, but from the tone of the article I suspect sometime between '80-'84.

Photos taken by Leavitt.

The only description of the jump is in the caption for the photos, which I've included. This has some text from the article also.

I believe I've read a description of that jump elsewhere, also, that described the literal "parking lot" training. Might be able to find it.

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also, since these chest parachutes(reserves) came from a sport parachute operation,it is feasible that there may have been an altimeter and or stopwatch mounted on at least one of them.How about it CKRET? what do we know about the chest packs supplied to ol coop on that day?

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i had forgotten about the P.O.B. s...nice catch Nick!
so can ckret tell us any more about the chest containers? were they military surplus types?



What is an alligator clip? That got my attention earlier - what does it look like?
Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 2013, 2014, 2015 by Jo Weber

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