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Walk down the stairs backwards. When you get clear of the fuselage pull the ripcord. Pilot chute launches and you are pulled off the stairs. Squidding inflation. No spin or tumble. No brutal opening shock. You are now under an open canopy. Your problems are far from over but you've exited a 727 successfully.

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But where and when _ that's the rub. It would be too easy to say the fact he was parted of some of the money means he tumbled... some speculate the two are related.

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Regardless, I am sticking with what I have written.

I assume then, you do not believe Robb Heady.

Why not?

No, I do not believe Robb Heady.  That is, assuming he said anything at all about walking to the bottom of the aft stairs without noticing any "appreciable wind".  It is interesting to note that you wrote nothing about that in your Mountain News 2013 article on Heady.

Humans are subjective, Mother Nature is not.  The rest has been explained several times previously.

Robb told me that there wasn't any major wind on the stairs, and the only significant wind was after he jumped and hit the slipstream, which tumbled him for about fifteen seconds. Even at 12,000 feet at 11 pm it wasn't too cold. The plane was also traveling at 300-350 mph he figured. That's all in the book, I believe. Page 321 or so.

I suggest, Robert, that until you read my 2016 book on DB Cooper your knowledge of this case must be considered incomplete. Relying on an online news magazine article from 2013 is less substantive.

But I understand the internal pressure you are under. You need Cooper to be a no-pull to put the money near T-Bar by direct impact via the alt-flight path scenario. Claiming a 35 degrees below zero wind chill on the stairs helps solidify that perspective.

All I'm saying is that one man who was on the stairs at 12,000 feet - with 300 mpg winds nearby - said it wasn't too cold. To me, that makes a minus 35 degree wind chill - and its accompanying disorientation and discombobulation of fingers, arms and cognitive functions - hard to accept. Especially since DB Cooper was at a lower altitude and a significantly slower speed.

BAS WRITES:  Okay, Robb didn't spell it our as definitively as you might desire, and I didn't nail it down for the hard-to-convince reader.

R99 REPLIES:  Neither you nor Robb said a single word about "wind chill" in your article and/or book.

BAS WRITES:  Nevertheless, you do seem to be making the claim that there was significant wind chill on the stairs and that it impacted DB Cooper to a great degree, possibly making him dysfunctional.

No?

R99 REPLIES:  Cooper would have been experiencing a wind chill factor of about -35 degrees (F or C, take your pick) at the bottom of the stairs.  I have never said that would make Cooper dysfunctional.

The coldest temperature I have ever personally experienced was more than 65 degrees F below zero in an unheated cockpit.  I don't know the exact temperature, but the thermometer needle looked like it had hit a peg at minus 65 degrees.  Based on some temperature compensated instruments that I had onboard, the temperature was much lower than standard for the altitude that I was at (36,500 feet).  Ice from my breath built up on my oxygen mask, outer flight jacket, and the canopy.  Some of the aircraft controls could not be used until I got to a lower and warmer altitude where they became functional again.

So low temperatures are important.

BAS WRITES:  If so, then the onus seems to be on you to prove how much wind chill there was and how impactful is was, since all the people who hijacked 727s and walked down the aft stairs made it to the ground. So, if they did, how come DB Cooper didn't? Why were the weather conditions and Cooper's temperament such that he was a no-pull and all the others were not?

Claiming that the conditions were too tough for Cooper to be successful requires you to prove it, since a cursory view of the available information suggests that it wasn't too tough a jump, even in November at 22 degrees F.

R99 REPLIES:  Again, your claim that I said Cooper was a no-pull because of the weather conditions is completely unfounded.  No one knows why Cooper was a no-pull although it is almost 100 percent certain that he was.

BAS WRITES:  Frankly, side comparisons to open-air cockpits, high-speed convertibles, and sticking a hand out a window while driving do not satisfy. You affirm your research status by saying you're a man of science. Okay, then, show us the science that explains both phenomena: Cooper's no-pull and everyone else's success, ie: LaPoint, McNally, et.al.

R99 REPLIES:  A few weeks ago, you told me that you were an "Investigator".  You make baseless claims above and then attribute them to me.  Now you are asking me to prove that your baseless claims are accurate.  If you are in fact an "Investigator", then get off your butt and prove your own allegations.

And if you don't understand what Georger was pointing out, using sports cars and open cockpit aircraft as illustrations, or what I have said above and previously about wind chill factors, then you have a very tough road ahead of you. 

The FBI pushed the certain death jump angle.

The public at large may have bought it, but skydivers didn't. 

We wondered who among us did it. And we weren't expecting our Cooper colleague
to be deceased.

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