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jdthomas

when and where?

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okay after a recent find at salvation army and a few qucik emaisl to parachute historian Howard White I am posting my first attempt at the when and where game.
Howard can come in after my try and post up cleaner images because of course he has this issue, knows most of the people involved and well is a living history machine when it come to this.
Joe

Crap now that I realize it you can see the where at the bottom of the page. so it's now WHO and WHEN?
www.greenboxphotography.com

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Quote

i have seen this very issue in a doctors office a couple years ago. its dr. jack joerns(i think) on some expedition to ?(it escapes me where right now.)



Jack C Joerns is correct, now what year? as wel also know it is Peru.

bit of history from the pages, this landing was dobe two miles above sea level and according to the quote was some what tricky " But now the lack of a brisk breeze to slow the landing speed of our gliding-type parachutes made jumping hazardous."

the red jump suit this person is wearing says Las vegas skydivers on the back if that helps!

Joe
www.greenboxphotography.com

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That is 1963, in the Andes. 13000'.

Pioneer says

"The decision (to use the PC) was based on the canopy's low rate of descent, even at high altitudes, as well as on its maneuverability and reliability. Without the para-commander, the trip would have been extremely difficult"....

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A little more on this.
1. The story was written by G. Brooks Baekeland and Peter Gimbel, who were at least by title "New York investment bankers." But Baekeland was also a physicist and anthropologist, and Gimbel was the heir to the Gimbel department store chain. Gimbel went on to be one of the two first divers on the Andrea Dorea after it sank, and later recovered a ship safe and opened it on TV. He also produced and directed the movie "Blue Water, White Death."
2. Others who jumped in were Jack C. Joerns and Peter Lake. Jack was a WW2 RAF pilot, a NASA engineer in Houston and long-time Galvston skydiver. According to news stories, he had also participated in underground nuclear tests in Nevada prior to the Peru expedition.
Peter was then a 19-year-old Dartmouth student, and was later executive producer of the movie "The Deep." Peter lives in Massachusetts, and has a lot of memories and memorabilia (including Peter Gimbel's log book) as well as unpublished pictures of the National Geographic expedition. I have been leaning on him for nearly a year -- so far without success -- to write a story for Parachutist about it.
3. One of the pilots was Richard H. Tomkins, C-49. One of the pictures in the story shows the expedition's two Helio Couriers. Dick Tomkins was among the founders, in 1957, of the Cambridge (MA) Parachute Club, perhaps the first collegiate club. He retired a couple of years ago from his position as a professor at Hunter College in NYC. A letter from him, about skydiving-related aircraft accidents, is in the June '08 Parachutist.
4. Jacques-André Istel had a lot to do with making the expedition happen, both as a media-savvy guy and as the president of the company distributing Pioneer's sport products, including the Para-Commander. His health, however, prevented him from going on the trip. Jacques told me last year that National Geographic canceled other planned parachuted-empowered trips as the result of the publicity surrounding the jumping death of an 11-year-old boy. (I'm not sure about this because the NatGeo expedition was in August, 1963 and Dana Rutledge's death was on his ninth jump in November, 1966.)
Attached: a better scan of the cover and one of the jungle jump pictures.

HW

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Hi howard,

One thing I find interesting about the photo of Jack under the PC is that I cannot find the control lines that the final production models had when the PC came on the market in Spring '64.

Pioneer did a demo prototype PC jump at the '63 Nationals at Issaquah ( before my time ). I have heard that at that time ( '63 ) they controlled the canopy by pulling down on the skirt/a suspension similar to how we controlled C-9's and 1.6's.

You may remember the numerous postings last year by 26 Ft Conical who is Dan Abbott. In those postings he talked about how Loy Brydon took the control system that Dan designed for the CrossBow to Pioneer for the PC. That is how the production PC came to have the control lines going to the upper panels at the side/top of the canopy.

Just some trivia for those who might want to know,

JerryBaumchen

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