nitrochute

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Posts posted by nitrochute

  3. i had been working at steve snyder's dz for a few years and when i turned 16 made my first jump(dec 1970) had a partial mal which i instinctively (and stupidly) tried (and sucessfully)cleared. 2 weeks later,, the very reserve that i was wearing on that jump was up for repack .i was helping the rigger so we put the reserve on the table to dump it.WE COULDN'T!it took 2 people trying at the same time before we were sucessful.the problem was that when the power ripcord for the sentinel auto opener was installed,the rigger did not take out some of the stitches on the ripcord pocket to accomodate the power r/c barrel(even tho he was familiar with the proceedure.)
    in 1978 i was asked to repack a round (26' navy conical) reserve .seems it had been used as a main for several hundreds of jumps. when i found this out, decided i was damn sure gonna do a pull test(and not the 40# test we have today but rather to grasp the fabric in my hands about 6 inches apart and pull.) the veru first panel i pulled on just absolutely ripped at maybe 5 to 10 lbs TOPS. upon further testing i was able to rip 27 or 28 panels (a 26 navy conical has 22 gores each made of 4 panels for a total of 88 panels.)i filled out a canopy damge chart and by compiling all the damge into one secton of the chart ,more than 25% of the total area of the canopy was bad. it would not have survivd an opening shock and this dude weighed like 200 lbs.

  6. the pictures on that website are NOT of the actual nb6/8 used by cooper.that is why all this talk of right hand pulls. one need to understand how the rig was configured in order to figure if cooper survived the jump.

  7. hmmmm....it appears that cossey modified the location of the ripcord.but i still am unclear on why he would do that. i have in 40+ years never seen somone do such an odd mod to a pilot emergency chute. was cossey a pilot as well as a rigger /jumper? and the chute was used strictly by him when he flew jumpers?. it seems such an odd set up from your description. does cossey have any interest in joining us on this forum?if it was set up that way i can almost guarantee that cooper bounced because it is such an odd configuration.

  8. Quote

    Quote

    From the witness statements and a bit of guess work, I think we can conclude Cooper did not tie the bag to his body.

    He tied the neck of the bag by wrapping the cord around it, then used what was left to wrap around the bag, leaving a loop.













    I believe he clipped this loop into the harness, leaving the bag dangling from the harness not his waist.


    if that is indeed how he attached it then he also ran the risk of the parachute entangling with the bag IF he was able to deploy.

  9. i have never seen an nb6/8 with the ripcord located on the right side main liftweb(unless it was a military rig modified for use as a sport main parchute).it is designed (as all military pilot rigs are) with the ripcord on the left main liftweb.for the reasons that guru stated, it would be dangerous to have moved the r/c to the right side main liftweb (what we call an outboard pull)it exposes the r/c to a greater risk of snagging or getting grabbed by a student who is panicking.i think maybe cossey is either mistaken or getting senile. it DOES NOT make sense that he would have configured it that way.
    as to the 2 stage pull.yes most any ripcord deployed system requires a 2 stage pull, the 1st stage is to remove the handle from its pocket, the second stage is actually to pull on the handle to extract the pins and open the container.the direction of pull to extract the pins depends on the type of rig. a backpack you pull down and out toward your feet .that is because the metal r/c housing(,the metal tube that the ripcord cable travels in to go from the front of the harness to the top of the parachute container,)travels up and over your left shoulder on a back type parachute.[right shoulder if outboard pull].if you pull sideways ,there is so much friction between the r/c cable and the housing that you may not be able to pull it.the pull that cossey suggested is for a seat type parchute where the r/c housing comes up from the left side of the seat pack (on your butt) to the left side main lift web.i have never seen a stock military harness backpack(from that era) where the r/c housing comes off the bottom of the container and then upwards toward the main liftweb.

  10. the ripcord is on the left main liftweb, about where your reserve ripcord is on todays modern rigs.maybe a a few inches higher.but remember, the nb6/8 has a floating main liftweb and the reserve ripcord pocket is mounted on it, which could also make locating and pulling the ripcord more difficult,as the r/c pocket and main liftweb will move as you pull on the r/c handle.(would also buffet around in freefall)if the mainliftweb is really loose, it will take several inches of pull just to get the r/c handle out of the pocket,then you still have to pull on the ripcord to extract the closing pins and deploy the parachute

  11. "tied around his waist".....only if he tied the money to himself BEFORE putting the chute on. it would have been extremely difficult and time consuming to tie it around his waste,by himself, with the parachute already on.(thats why i am thinking he tied it to the harness/main liftweb)

    as to your question about the hard pull/ interference from the money bag, at most coop would have had about 51-52 seconds to work with (in skydiving at that time a 45 second delay would be made from 10000 ft with deployment at 2500 feet above ground level)unless he carried a knife out the door with him it would have been very difficult to alleviate the problem by cutting the bag loose

  12. "back in the day "NOBODY cared about pull forces at least to the paranoid extremes of today. not many rigger used a fish scale to check the pull force either. if you could close it,it was used.i was actually the victim of this mentality on my first jump in 1970. the reserve parchute that i wore on my first jump could not be pulled even w/2 people trying. (i had a malfuntion on my main parachute , but luckily i was able to clear it and get it open.)since the chute cooper used was a pilot emergency chute , it would only have been deployed on the packing table to repack it every 60 days .it wasnt like a main parachute that gets deployed in freefall and then gets repacked. so yes it is absolutely possible to have such a rig laying around. most pilots would not use a parchute even if available to them unless say the wings fell off the airplane.

  13. so me and guru have some knowledge of the type of parachutes that ol coop used,and we been talking...
    the nb 6/nb8 harness has a floating main lift web.it runs through an adaptor at the shoulder and becomes the riser that the canopy is attached to.(picture the old ww2 harnesses,the ones w/o capewell canopy releases)if ol coop tied the bag/sack of money to himself it most likely would involve the main lift web.even if it was tight/secure it would flop around possibly blocking his access to the ripcord handle or possibly even smackin the boy upside the head and knocking him out. i hate to stay fixated on the parachute issue, but i think it would be helpfull to determine if he even was able to deploy the parachute(and lets not forget the pack was designed for a much less bulky 26 ft canopy but had a bulkier 28 foot canopy in it which would result in a very hard/ impossible pull.) so if we couple all these things , it seems extremely unlikely that the boy would have survived the jump. methinks he was a lawn dart ......but just my 2 cents worth

  15. during the gas crisis of 1973 i caught my neighbor siphoning gas from my car one night and chased his sorry ass down the road with my shotgun. didnt have to use it tho because my german shepherd tore him a new one first.

  18. i have a couple of questions . is it possible that cooper may have planned to make the jump under the cover of darkness all along? the sight of someone descending under parachute in a place where there was NO commercial drop zone (in broad daylight) would definitely attract attention.
    also did cooper have any sort of detectable accent?

  23. RE : hard pull
    i will state this again for the 3 rd or fourth time,. ..
    ckret says cossey supplied an nb6 witha 28 ft canopy.this is significant because the nb6 is made for the much less bulky, and smaller 26 ft navy conical. an nb 6 is a tite container with a 26 ft canopy, with a 28 ft canopy, the pull IS HARD possibly next to imppossible. the contaiher had cones (this was before the widespread use of closing loops in any rig)rigs with cones have a harder pull than the same rig with loops. fact. i would like to get my hands on an old nb6 and stuff a 28 footer in there then put a fish scale on it.but i have not been able to locate one.but if i did we could prove wheteher it was possible for cooper to pull that ripcord. back in the day when the cooper caper happened it was NOT common practice to test the pull force with afish scale, so it is entirely feasible that ol coop got a rig that couldnt be deployed in freefall,despite what cosseys belief was.personally,as a rigger with 30 years experience , that 28 ft should NEVER have been put in the nb6 .