What is a 727 like that worth?

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Anywhere from $100,000 to $350,000 depending on engine and component times remaining before overhaul is required. Asking prices mean nothing, the market for 727s is very soft since they require 3 crew in the cockpit and have 3 engines to overhaul. The exceptions are the exec mods with a full VALSAN upgrade. They still command high prices. 727 is a FAST plane even by today's standards and some rich owners like that speed a lot. VALSAN and other companies have made hush kit and engine upgrade mods, and even added winglets for drag reduction. There were plans to eliminate the FE position but I don't think that expensive mod made it to market. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Pretty cheap home brewed  cruise missile if you buy a timed out one that is still running OK. Put in a GPS coupled 3D autopilot and bail out after takeoff. Better remember to remove the Cooper Vane first.

377

There was a TV show on cable a few years ago about a group who bought a 727 and deliberately crashed it in an experiment.  I think the crash was done at a remote dirt strip in Mexico.  The flight crew consisted of a captain who had a lot of parachuting experience and was the last person off the aircraft.  The copilot and flight engineer didn't have parachute experience so they were hooked up to tandem jump instructors and bailed out as soon as possible.  After the captain jumped, the airliner was "flown" by remote control from another aircraft into the dirt strip.

Will Rollins makes a lot out of reports of someone walking around the roads in Ariel on the night of the hijacking; obviously the FBI would have talked to those witnesses. Are there any comments from FBI agents who talked to these witnesses? What did the investigators think of these reports?

Keep an open mind when you hear of such reports.  It was cold and raining in the Ariel area that night and I frankly doubt anyone was out in the weather without a valid reason.  Or to put it another way, if Cooper survived the jump, and landed in the Ariel area, he was probably interested in getting out of the weather.

Shutter:  I come at the Cooper case from the opposite end and rather than figuring out who DB is, I know who he is and did so from the start in the first year following Norjak when we were contacted by the FBI. I was pretty sure Sheridan Peterson did the job as he was in planning the caper when he lived at our home for one month about 9 years before Norjak. Yes, he planned the caper very well and thought of most every thing and that is why he has never been caught. I told the FBI Agent White that I was sure Sheridan did the job and why. It is interesting that the FBI were on to him that quickly following Norjak but they were interested in all the Smoke Jumpers at that time as it would have taken the skills of a Smoke Jumper to do it. However, I did not become sure that Sheridan was DB Coooper until February of 2016 when my brain figured out that his alibi had to be phony ant the phony part had to be that he could not have been delivering one of his two children in Nepal and do the Norjak job too. So, I checked the public records with Persopo.com and found the revealing information that none of Sheridan's children were born in the same year as Norjak. That means he lied to the FBI (a Federal Crime with jail time) about where he was during Norjak. 
I passed my new information on to the Seattle FBI Curtis Eng and expected the case would be quickly solved in 2016. The FBI however decided to announce in the 4 hour History Channel show that they were closing the case unsolved.
So, the question is why did Curtis Eng do that when he had all he needed to solve the case? I suspect that Sheridan was working for the CIA when in Vietnam as he said all the other ex-Smoke Jumpers were doing in Vietnam. Did Curtis Eng cover-up the case for Sheridan because he was CIA at one time? We will probably never know unless some top official in the US Government start making the FBI stop covering-up their cases and opens them up for the public to see. That means our DB COOPER FORUM  will just die on the vine unless the FBI starts working for us.
Bob Sailshaw
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Will Rollins makes a lot out of reports of someone walking around the roads in Ariel on the night of the hijacking; obviously the FBI would have talked to those witnesses. Are there any comments from FBI agents who talked to these witnesses? What did the investigators think of these reports?

Maybe Bruce interviewed some of these people? Otherwise there are only newspaper reports to go on.
Do a search at Dropzone.

Eye-Witnesses

The short answer is "No," I haven't interviewed anyone who says they saw a man/plane/etc. in the Ariel area on the night in question.

The longer answer is that I would like to, and at present the best shot I have at doing that is to accompany Bill Rollins when he comes out to Cooper Country to further establish his theories. He has a lead on the daughter of someone who claims to have seen a man walking the road. And he'll have a vehicle...

Further, the only person I have spoken with who was definitely in the area is Dona Elliott, but sadly, I don't consider her a top-notch witness in terms of reliably and consistency. To wit:

- Was the rain really coming down sideways, and could she really not see across the street from her home in Amboy?

- Was the plane really at 3-4,000 feet? How did she hear the thing with the rain going sideways?

Tom Colbert is apparently looking into this area of research to peg Airborne Bob at a hide-away airport in Amboy...

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Will Rollins makes a lot out of reports of someone walking around the roads in Ariel on the night of the hijacking; obviously the FBI would have talked to those witnesses. Are there any comments from FBI agents who talked to these witnesses? What did the investigators think of these reports?

Maybe Bruce interviewed some of these people? Otherwise there are only newspaper reports to go on.
Do a search at Dropzone.

Eye-Witnesses

The short answer is "No," I haven't interviewed anyone who says they saw a man/plane/etc. in the Ariel area on the night in question.

The longer answer is that I would like to, and at present the best shot I have at doing that is to accompany Bill Rollins when he comes out to Cooper Country to further establish his theories. He has a lead on the daughter of someone who claims to have seen a man walking the road. And he'll have a vehicle...

Further, the only person I have spoken with who was definitely in the area is Dona Elliott, but sadly, I don't consider her a top-notch witness in terms of reliably and consistency. To wit:

- Was the rain really coming down sideways, and could she really not see across the street from her home in Amboy?

- Was the plane really at 3-4,000 feet? How did she hear the thing with the rain going sideways?

Tom Colbert is apparently looking into this area of research to peg Airborne Bob at a hide-away airport in Amboy...

Bruce,

The surface wind in the Portland/Vancouver area that evening was about 10 MPH.  This can be checked on "Weather Underground".  So the light rain was NOT going sideways.

The airliner reached 10,000 feet Above Sea Level before it got to the Malay Intersection and stayed at that altitude, or very close to it, until it got down to Northern California where it went up to 11,000 feet in order to clear the mountains between it and Reno.

Hello everyone been following the DB Cooper case for some time.
Has anyone ever spoke about how he may of gotten to the Portland airport the day of the hijacking?
Did he take a taxi,bus did someone drop him off, drive his own car?
 

If you haven't stopped by our website, you might want to read the FBI files on the case. we also have loads of other information not found on other sites...

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