Author Topic: New Forum & News Updates  (Read 2035516 times)

Offline georger

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6000 on: May 09, 2019, 11:57:57 PM »
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Did everyone move over to the DropZone? Feels lonely in here...

I didnt -  :rofl:
 
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Offline Shutter

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6001 on: May 10, 2019, 12:59:54 AM »
I took some time to pester Blevins about the Amboy chute. had him going nuts trying to get me to post an article where Cossey stated the Amboy chute was 34 feet in diameter and was a cargo chute...finally gave him a hint that would give it away.

Flyjack
Blevins
EU

are the only members I see there. a couple jumpers and one loner posting ever so often. basically 90% of the posts are from Robert...

Edit: Robert got his panties in a bunch again. I failed to notice a member finally posted the link to Bruces site. now he is trying to claim he already knew. then tells me in a PM he had a "suspicion" lol. he also doesn't believe he comments more than anyone else.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2019, 07:11:51 AM by Shutter »
 

Offline Bruce A. Smith

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6002 on: May 11, 2019, 10:27:40 PM »
Notes on SAGE Radar


Flyjack gave me the contact information for a Dave Morgan, who was a SAGE radar operator at McChord AB in 1971, although not on duty on the evening on November 24th. Dave and I spoke today, and although the conversation was delightful, I didn’t learn at lot of new stuff.

Nevertheless, and most importantly, Dave told me that the SAGE could only pick up a skydiver if chaff was used to amplify the bounce-back.

He also gave me an interesting military perspective on the Cooper skyjacking. He and many others at McChord were concerned that Cooper might use the airplane as a weapon and fly it into a military installation, or a nuclear reactor, such as at Hanford. He was quite passionate about this possibility, and acknowledged it presaged 9-11 fears by thirty years.

I regaled Dave with tales about Major Dawson and what he said the Adele Ferguson once he was a WA State Legislator; specifically saying that he was instructed by his NORAD command to NOT put chaff in the chutes he was preparing for DB Cooper.

Dave and I talked at length about the vagaries of truth when power, money, and prestige are in play. He served a lot in Vietnam and SE Asia, and had heard about MAC-V-SOG. I'm mailing a copy of my book to Dave so that he can refresh his memory back to those days, and then I'll call him back to see if he has anything more to share.

In the meantime, he gave me the name of the guy who was the duty officer when Coop was flying bye-bye. 25th Air Defense Command, I believe.
 

Offline Bruce A. Smith

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6003 on: May 12, 2019, 12:01:30 AM »
I just posted a piece on Dave Morgan, the SAGE operator, at the Mountain News. Hopefully this will become the new site for Cooper discussion at MN as the current thread has almost 1,000 comments and is loading slowly.

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Offline georger

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6004 on: May 12, 2019, 03:20:09 PM »
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I just posted a piece on Dave Morgan, the SAGE operator, at the Mountain News. Hopefully this will become the new site for Cooper discussion at MN as the current thread has almost 1,000 comments and is loading slowly.

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Why didn't Flyjack conduct the interview?  In order to keep this from becoming another snuff job?  ;)

BTW there are retiree groups full of people, who worked with the old tube type IBM systems SAGE used. These people's careers spanned the whole period from tube type computer systems to transistor-based systems, including the advent of GPS in the 1960s and 70s etc.

[The history of GPS started first in 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, as an idea for military and intelligence usage. The main idea about GPS came with the launching of the spacecraft Sputnik, by the Soviet Union back in 1957. That is how the history of GPS or the global positioning system was born.]
« Last Edit: May 12, 2019, 03:34:43 PM by georger »
 

Offline Darren

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6005 on: May 13, 2019, 12:33:56 PM »
Episode 12 with Marty Andrade is up now. Let me know what you guys think!

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The Cooper Vortex - A Podcast about DB Cooper - Available on most podcast apps
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Offline Parrotheadvol

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6006 on: May 13, 2019, 12:40:55 PM »
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Episode 12 with Marty Andrade is up now. Let me know what you guys think!

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I'll give it a listen. I have really enjoyed these podcasts. I've listened to all of them except the Blevins episode, which I have no intention of listening to. The Tom Kaye episode was very enjoyable.
 
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Offline EU

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6007 on: May 13, 2019, 05:30:00 PM »
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Episode 12 with Marty Andrade is up now. Let me know what you guys think!

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I thought this episode was outstanding. I rank it # 1 just ahead of Tom Kaye's podcast at # 2. Well worth the listen.
Some men see things as they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

RFK
 
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Offline andrade1812

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6008 on: May 13, 2019, 07:10:23 PM »
You guys are too kind, Darren and his audio editor deserve most of the credit.
 
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Offline fcastle866

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6009 on: May 13, 2019, 08:48:09 PM »
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Episode 12 with Marty Andrade is up now. Let me know what you guys think!

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This was a great podcast.  It was around an hour and forty minutes.  I could have listened for double that.  I hope there is a round 2 with Martin.  I was particularly interested in hearing the mention of RMI (titanium manufacturer).  This was the first time I had heard mention of it since Tom Kaye (there was a detailed post a while back).  One of the prevailing narratives was that Cooper worked at Boeing.  When I was an amateur in this case, I think I believed that.  But now I realize that the Boeing connection is all too convenient.  A man from Seattle who worked at Boeing hijacks a plane in Portland, yet he is never identified.  That just does not fit.

I've done a decent amount of research on RMI, its partners, and its competitors in the titanium industry during the 1970's.  Contrary to popular belief, the titanium business in the US was actually booming in the 1970's.  We even had to import titanium from Russia to keep up with demand (hard to believe).

RMI Company (formerly known as Reactive Metals, Inc) was a partnership between United States Steel and National Distillers & Chemical Corporation.  One of the largest titanium mines in the world was actually in upstate New York.  There were a number of titanium manufacturer's headquartered east of the Mississippi, and many of these had branches or subsidiaries in the Northeast (as mentioned about RMI in Ohio in the podcast).  Titanium Metals Corporation of America, the US's largest titanium producer in 1968 had their headquarters in New York City (later moved to New Jersey).

What does this mean?   From my perspective, it means that if the tie was Cooper's, or from a colleague of his, then focusing solely on Boeing or Tektronix could be shortsighted.  Not only did some of these companies mine titanium, they produced it and sold it.  And commercially pure titanium (found on the tie) was not  as uncommon as one might think.  Like the CRT tube discussion, just because there was CRT materials on the tie, does not mean these came during the manufacturing process, they could have come from further downstream, during assembly or usage.

Titanium had a number of qualities, one was that it was light weight, and one was that it had anti-corrosive properties.

Where did the tie come from?  Industrial chemicals? Possibly, but there are other possibilities and other industries that used commercially pure titanium (mainly military aircraft, but not only).

Safe to say if the tie was Cooper's, then he was not a school teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, etc.  I'd personally like to hear people's recent thoughts on the tie.
« Last Edit: May 13, 2019, 08:51:49 PM by fcastle866 »
 
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Offline 377

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6010 on: May 14, 2019, 02:02:17 PM »
"Safe to say if the tie was Cooper's, then he was not a school teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, etc.  I'd personally like to hear people's recent thoughts on the tie."

The machined Al curls interest me. Ties are verboten on machine shop floors as they can get caught in rotating machinery with often fatal results.  I worked in the engineering machine shop in college and there were signs everywhere about no ties, necklaces or dangling hair. So how do machined tailings/turnings end up on a tie? There are explanations of course. Cooper was apparently in an environment where aluminum was machined but unlikely a machinist himself. 

The rich McCrone data is mind-blowing. So many clues, but no obvious solution that accounts for everything they found. I wish IBM would let WATSON crunch on the mystery for a while.

377
 

Offline Robert99

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6011 on: May 14, 2019, 02:49:50 PM »
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"Safe to say if the tie was Cooper's, then he was not a school teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, etc.  I'd personally like to hear people's recent thoughts on the tie."

The machined Al curls interest me. Ties are verboten on machine shop floors as they can get caught in rotating machinery with often fatal results.  I worked in the engineering machine shop in college and there were signs everywhere about no ties, necklaces or dangling hair. So how do machined tailings/turnings end up on a tie? There are explanations of course. Cooper was apparently in an environment where aluminum was machined but unlikely a machinist himself. 

The rich McCrone data is mind-blowing. So many clues, but no obvious solution that accounts for everything they found. I wish IBM would let WATSON crunch on the mystery for a while.

377

377,

I am in complete agreement that ties are not normally worn in machine shop environments.  Nevertheless, Tom Kaye can show you pictures of machinists wearing normal ties in such an environment.
 

Offline EU

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6012 on: May 14, 2019, 03:10:19 PM »
It's interesting to consider the tie worn in an environment whereby titanium, high-grade stainless steel and aluminum could be picked up. Again, this is the 60's and very early 70's.

If you look at pictures from Boeing back in the 60's and 70's you see DB Coopers everywhere. There are always several men wearing skinny black ties walking the factory floor. The same cannot be said about other industries.

I looked into pictures from Tektronix, various titanium manufacturers and chemical manufacturers. I found very few pictures of men wearing ties on the factory floors of those facilities.

It's important not to become myopic with the tie. What I mean is that the tie had what it had on it. That is only part of the picture. Let's not forget DBC also demonstrated very unique knowledge about the 727 and aviation in general. This also has to be present in any Cooper suspect. In my mind, this "knowledge" may actually be more telling about DBC's whereabouts then the particles found upon the tie. That said, when you combine the particles and all that Boeing brings to the equation--not to mention DBC's familiarity with the Seattle region--I consider it much more likely that DBC came from Boeing than an oscilloscope manufacturer in Portland or a titanium manufacturer in Ohio.
Some men see things as they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

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Offline georger

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6013 on: May 14, 2019, 03:17:11 PM »
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"Safe to say if the tie was Cooper's, then he was not a school teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, etc.  I'd personally like to hear people's recent thoughts on the tie."

The machined Al curls interest me. Ties are verboten on machine shop floors as they can get caught in rotating machinery with often fatal results.  I worked in the engineering machine shop in college and there were signs everywhere about no ties, necklaces or dangling hair. So how do machined tailings/turnings end up on a tie? There are explanations of course. Cooper was apparently in an environment where aluminum was machined but unlikely a machinist himself. 

The rich McCrone data is mind-blowing. So many clues, but no obvious solution that accounts for everything they found. I wish IBM would let WATSON crunch on the mystery for a while.

377

377,

I am in complete agreement that ties are not normally worn in machine shop environments.  Nevertheless, Tom Kaye can show you pictures of machinists wearing normal ties in such an environment.

I agree - there are exceptions to all rules. People violate the rules all the time. I remember a machine shop housed right next to the UI Ag and Labor Medicine Center on the UI Oakdale campus in the 70's with people running machinery and lathes with many professional staff doing machining wearing ties!  It was the  UI Ag and Labor Medicine Center that wrote laws for the State of Iowa/OSHA telling workers what dress codes in work sites should be! There were signs posted all over the place in machine shops saying: NO TIES! The rules were never enforced.   
 
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Offline georger

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Re: New Forum & News Updates
« Reply #6014 on: May 14, 2019, 03:28:31 PM »
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It's interesting to consider the tie worn in an environment whereby titanium, high-grade stainless steel and aluminum could be picked up. Again, this is the 60's and very early 70's.

If you look at pictures from Boeing back in the 60's and 70's you see DB Coopers everywhere. There are always several men wearing skinny black ties walking the factory floor. The same cannot be said about other industries.

I looked into pictures from Tektronix, various titanium manufacturers and chemical manufacturers. I found very few pictures of men wearing ties on the factory floors of those facilities.

It's important not to become myopic with the tie. What I mean is that the tie had what it had on it. That is only part of the picture. Let's not forget DBC also demonstrated very unique knowledge about the 727 and aviation in general. This also has to be present in any Cooper suspect. In my mind, this "knowledge" may actually be more telling about DBC's whereabouts then the particles found upon the tie. That said, when you combine the particles and all that Boeing brings to the equation--not to mention DBC's familiarity with the Seattle region--I consider it much more likely that DBC came from Boeing than an oscilloscope manufacturer in Portland or a titanium manufacturer in Ohio.

Do you have any actual experience in any of these areas, or is yours all armchair opinion?