BobBurnham

Well, this isn't really a scary story, but it's from the old days. We jumped at Issaquah WA in the late 60's I think. One of the guys had some older relative that gave him a WWI (I think) flare parachute, and he wanted to find something fun to do with it. He secured a rock to it somehow, possibly in a little bucket, for weight. Some of us were going up for a jump and he wanted us to throw it out and he would be on the ground to go get it. So, during climb out, at about 500 feet we opened the door and pitched this thing out, aiming to have it land in a dusty open field on the other side of Hwy 10. Somehow the chute gobbed up and went whistling down and thumped in prettly dramatically. There were cars stopping and people getting out and running out to where it came down. My buddy was there and was picking it up when several whuffos came running up and yelling "is he ok?" He made motions like dusting himself off and just said "yeah, I'll be ok" Everybodies jaw hit the floor, and when they recovered they all walked slowly back to their cars shaking their heads in amazement. I don't remember any news stories in the paper, but I bet that somebody reported it.

Hi Jerry, I hadn't realized that the plane in Arlington was N4444Q (I think) that we had at Issaquah. Interesting. Yes, we have established that we were at some of the same meets back then, so I'm sure we have met at some point. Thanks, Bob

Hi 377, I know this is old and I just stumbled across it. Since I'm an old, old, old jumper from Washington state I remember the Lodestars. I never jumped the one from Arlington, but we had another at Issaquah and I made quite a few jumps from it. As far as the pilot in Arlington being able to get control back, he may have had his hands full. Back in those days we sat on the floor with no seat belts and I have heard speculation that, when the stall occurred, there may have been jumpers that were flung up into the cockpit and interfered with getting it back under control. Pretty scary thought, but it has the ring of truth to it. This was very sad and I lost a number of friends in this accident.

I jumped at Dillingham Field in the late 60's. I was in the Air Force then stationed at Hickam AFB. I remember a guy called Sonny Orr back then. I can't help with where he might be now but, wasn't he the guy that was getting married and all his buddies held him down and shaved his chest so his bride wouldn't get close to him because of the stubble? Nasty trick. We used to headquarter at the Fire Station on the field back then. We used to go jump into pineapple fields.

Bessie, Yes, having the cutaway cable loop sticking out from under the Capewell cover was so eye catching and obvious that it must have been done on purpose. Makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck to think that somebody might actually jump it like that. Bob

Hi 377, After discovering this site I'm still going through the history in these pages. Sometimes I can't resist making comments as I go. Did you know that to fly a Connie the pilot had to be younger than 45 years old. This is because nobody older than that would be able to handle three pieces of tail at once.

Hi 377, Yes I have. There was a lot of those at Hickam AFB, Hawaii when I was stationed there. Talking to one of the 133 pilot when asked what it was like to fly he said "it's like sitting on your front porch flying your house!". BTW, Congrats on your story and article about the 133. A great read. I filled out a lot of those maintenance logs you showed and that brought back memories. Thanks!

I had a piggyback rig back then and I liked it a lot, but there is still some good things to be said about the old belly warts when your pack won't open. It seems like I should recognize your name but I don't. Sounds like we probably ran into each other a lot at NW functions back then. Nice to hear from you.

Sorry about reviving this conversation after so many years, but I'm old and live in the past. I'm pretty sure I was at this boogie in Deer Park. That guy second from right in the back row sure looks like Ralph. If it's the load I'm thinking of Ralph had a bad experience at opening. Had a spinning mal and cut away, but it was a long time before his reserve showed. It took so long that everybody was on pins and needles. You could clearly see from his body position that he was fighting some kind of problem over his shoulder. So eventually his reserve showed and it opened fine. On the ground he said that he pulled the reserve and the container wouldn't open. He had to reach over his shoulder and grab the pack material and physically rip it open to get it to take off. I think that it had been a long time since the canopy had been opened and aired. Need to take better care of your gear Ralph.

Yes, the B-36 used six 4360s, so 28 cylinders per engine times 2 plugs per cylinder times 6 engines equals 336 plugs. I don't know what they had on the B-36, but the 124 had an engine analyzer capable of looking at the spark waveform of all 224 plugs. Amazing old plane!

I just stumbled on to this thread. I know it's old but I couldn't resist commenting. I used to be a crew chief on C-124s and I can speak to how much went into starting and running those big old 28 cylinder 4360 cu inch engines. First you pushed the starter button and allowed the engine to turn over for a certain number of blade counts (this was to verify that one of the lower cylinders hadn't gotten enough liquid in them to cause a liquid lock). Then you turned on the ignition and continued to hold the starter while depressing the ignition boost and prime. When the engine begins to fire you release the starter button, but continue to hold the prime and ignition boost until the engine is idling smoothly. At this point you slide in the mixture lever and watch for an rpm drop. When the rpm dips then you release the prime and the engine will be going. You had to be pretty careful with the timing of the mixture lever and the release of the prime button. If you got it wrong it would result in a backfire that many times blew the exhaust stacks right off the engine, stripping the mounting studs out of the cylinder. Thanks for raising these old memories!

How about "Rocky" Kenoyer. He was named after the mountain goat mascot for Great Northern Railroad. This was due to his early RW tendencies to blow up budding formations. He got his act together though and was a member of the world champion 8 man team Cleareye Express.

Hi Jerry, Thanks for that explanation. I was jumping back then myself, and what I remember thinking about this was that we required students to do five static line jumps with the last couple having a dummy ripcord pull. This was because there was concern whether a confused student on one of their first few jumps would panic and not remember to pull a ripcord. This concern extended to emergency procedures and we didn't teach cutaways out of concern that a noob might not pull the reserve. Whatever he had up there was going to be better than nothing.

Wow, can't top that one! However I had a few that I feel lucky to survive. The one I'm going to tell about happened over Issaquah, WA in the late '60s. I think it was an RW load with two Cessna's from 12500. I remember that the formation was starting to build and I was working my way into a slot when WHAMMO! I saw stars and I think the lights went out for a few seconds. I came to pretty quickly but was a little disoriented, so I just pulled the ripcord. I was open at about 6000 and just kind of reeling and trying to come to my senses. It was nice to have the extra altitude to sort out what I was going to do to land near the field. I did ok and managed to land in the DZ parking lot and just laid there for a few minutes. After getting together to rehash what had happened I learned that a good friend was flying camera and didn't realize that he was sliding sideways at a pretty high rate of speed and had slammed into me. He said he was sure glad to see me pull after that. I was jumping a piggyback and the 2500lb bellyband had been ripped off the rig. I had deep black and blue from my knee to my armpit. It is sobering to think that nobody used automatic openers back in those days.

Twardo, I'm not sure who originated this reply, but when a student would ask about what happens if both chutes don't open I would tell them to cross your legs, twist your torso and put your arms above your head and cross them. The usual reply was "How would that help you?". I would then answer "Well, it won't help YOU, but it will help the ground crew screw you out of the ground." It was always fun watching the reaction.

That was a long time ago but I think I remember Burt Lancaster having a line that said something like 'jumping is like beating your head against the wall as it feels so good to stop'.

It's an interesting trick to be able to create a streamer on an old round because of a packing error. Years ago I wanted to do an intentional cutaway and wanted to cause a real malfunction to cut away. I tried rolling it in a ball and wadding it up in various configurations, but nothing worked. Finally I tied the skirt band together and that worked better than I had imagined. I had always thought that just the pilot chute being out would pull you almost vertical, but no. My feet floated up in front of me before I cut it away. Scared the pee out of me!

Hi Jerry, Reading your post brings back a lot of memories. Ted had a real mess on his hands with the neighbors at Donald. I heard that the worst of it started when Ted wanted to buy some property to make his runway longer. The ones at one end of the runway jacked the price up figuring he'd have to pay it, so Ted bought a chunk at the other end and war broke out. The ones that jacked the price up then built a tower to interfere with takeoffs and they had events like somebody throwing a hammer into the prop and running out and cutting up the chutes of those that unfortunately landed in the wrong spot. I had to drive to Salem to bail out my brother who was arrested for trespassing when he landed on the wrong side of the fence. Yes, good old days.

I used to jump at Snohomish, WA during the winter when the grass runway at Issaquah was not usable (mud). The Master Rigger in the loft there (old Al Zilk) told me one day that he had an old silk parachute from the early 1930's called a Hoffman Triangle. He said it was in good condition and I could put a jump on it if I wanted. So I decided to give it a try. Packing it was weird. It had some gores that were giant and others that were only a few inches wide. In spite of Al's recommendation of the canopy I decided to do a hop and pop rather than anything more stressfull to the rig. It opened nicely and seemed to steer ok. With all those different sized gores it did look somewhat like a triangle. I have to say though that it did "roar to the sod" on landing.

Nice to hear Gary Lewis' name again. I used to jump with him at Issaquah WA. That was before he was writing books. At Issaquah we had a lot of people that were in to accuracy competition. I had 4' of lines removed and tightened the lobe lines a little to widen the high pressure area and move it closer to the steering slots. That made it come down a little faster but gave you better and more controllable sinking ability. I would come in high and sink it right in for a DC. Later I got a Papillon (black, red & green checkerboard) and it had even better, more controllable sink capability.

Well, I'm having fun too. So I'll add one that IS from the early 70's Back then students all had to start with a few static lines. Jumpmasters learned pretty quick to spot the most likely to back out and make sure they were not in the front of the 170. My buddy took a load up and miscalculated which to put in the front seat. He had one that wouldn't go and they circled for several passes and he finally got her out on the step. She was so petrified that when he tapped on her leg and yelled GO!! she wouldn't let go. And so they made another go around with her on the step. This next time he gave the go she let go without pushing off and fell straight down so that her backpack wedged over the step. He had some of the students hold on to his legs and was out trying to lift her off the step, but couldn't get enough leverage to lift her off the step. They were making go arounds under power but were still not maintaining altitude. We used to have a game we did for spectators that we called "Helmet Time". Everyone would hold their helmets and the pilot would slowly push the nose over and gain speed until finally pull up and get some negative Gs over the top and all our helmets would float. It wowed the newbies! My buddy had a quick idea and told the pilot "Helmet Time!". He hung out with the others holding his feet and when the negative Gs happened he had the strength to flip her off the step. Thank god she was on static line because she wasn't going to pull any ripcord! The rest of the students went in order and did just fine. We never saw that one again.

Hi G, I was one of the mainstays at Issaquah when this DB Cooper thing happened. The TV crew was all over our clubhouse and I was packing a reserve and they filmed me and used it as backdrop for the story on the news. I almost lived at the clubhouse at the time, but I wasn't there the night all this went down, and it's been more than 40 years ago. What I remember hearing was that the WSP drove out to the clubhouse and picked up parachutes (must have been the reserves) and took them to the airport. Linn Emrich ? lived at the field and so he must have got them out of the equipment room. We had that prop reserve all sewn up so that when we had students practicing throwing it out that we didn't have a big mess to untangle every time. My memory is that there was so much material removed from it that it was obvious that it was fake. Linn would have known that, so that is one aspect of this that I don't understand. Coss did business with a lot of aircraft owners and packed their rigs for them both at home and at the club. So the backpacks must have come from him and may have been owned by the other guy in this story. That's all I can think. Coss was a great guy and will be missed. I really hope it turns out to be a mistake and this was all an accident, but it doesn't sound like it. I was looking for more information when I came across this thread, so I registered and couldn't resist adding some notes even if I don't really have a good recollection of the facts in this. Thanks, Bob