Cool!

Some questions:

When the video starts, it appears that urban-like lights can be seen immediately ahead. My take-away is that there was plenty of urban glow in the Ariel area. True?

The plane seemed to be flying very slowly. Did it really take nine minutes to fly from Ariel to the Columbia River?

I have uploaded the video to You Tube. this is the cockpit view from Ariel to the Columbia river. watch in HD for best viewing 

nice! 

Does anyone know, and able to give the specific person or document, of when the Landing Zone of Ariel-Amboy was established?

I remember hearing or reading somewhere that it was a few hours after the oscillations, and confirmed when the plane landed in Reno without DBC on board. That puts the time of pin-pointing LZ-A at about 11-11:30 pm on November 24th.

But I can't find anything definitive on that determination.  You gots?

That's a central issue and a good question!

Who, what, and where called the (first) Drop (zones?) ? The folks at Minneapolis called Ariel pretty quickly (Soderlind)? Folks in (Seattle?) sent Himms etal in a helicopter up to the Woodland area to look for Cooper ?  Then the NWA-FBI Search map gets spun out by ____? and guided by that search map the area(s) of ___ were searched on the ground.

Photos of the search coordination team clearly shows people using the NWA-FBI search map...

Then in 1976 I remind you Himms speaks out publicly saying the (new?) drop zone has been moved to "12 miles north of Portland" ... wherever in hell he was talking about!

I wanted to make sure the map I'm using is accurate along with any other maps I use. I positioned the plane directly over Battleground and brought up Google maps. the photo below shows how accurate the position was. I can also check it by Vor to Vor, but wanted to make sure this way as well...

VORs have a narrow "cone of silence" (or some such thing) extending vertically from the station.  I think the cone is about three degrees wide.  So at 10,000 feet, you are probably within that cone and are about as accurate as you can be with a VOR.  In other words, you have hit your target.

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Then in 1976 I remind you Himms speaks out publicly saying the (new?) drop zone has been moved to "12 miles north of Portland" ... wherever in hell he was talking about!

That's a very interesting statement.  12 miles north of downtown Portland puts you in Vancouver Lake and around the southern end of Caterpillar Island.

Himms didn't say 'where' (on an east-west line, 12 miles north of Portland) he was talking about and reporters didn't bother to ask! Except for the several newspaper articles publishing his remarks, it changed nothing. People (officials) still continued to talk about Ariel, Merwin Lake, and by 1980 Himms himself and others were now playing with the idea the flight path might have been off by as much as 20 miles ... to the east!

  
 

So where is Portland, eh? I guess we need to establish that before we start marking off the "12 miles north."

To me, and most locals I know, Portland starts at the Columbia River. When you cross into Oregon on I-5, you feel like you're entering Portland as well. PDX is off to your left, and you can see the planes on approach.

 Hence, 12 miles north of Portland in the vernacular puts you into the Orchards/northern Vancouver area.

However, the drive into the heart of Portland takes forever! It's at least 10-12 miles before you start seeing the downtown buildings and stadium.

If you recall, Sluggo thought Orchards was a viable search zone. based to some extent on Himm's 1976 statement?
That is where Portland is!

Robt 99 wrote: "Recently, I tried to make duplicate copies of my "archive disks" in order to send the maps to the WSHM.  But I have not been able to get any of the disks, which have worked in the past, to open.  No reason for this can be determined.  I am using the very same computer as before and only the normal upgrades to Windows 7 and to Internet Explorer 11 have been made."

Sounds like Jo's POOF stories might be real.

377

Jo's poof stories are nonsense and will stay that way.  I did send the original disks in question to WSHM and they apparently were able to open them.  They are listed on WSHM's web page.

I live in an area that generates quite a bit of interest from the Chinese and Russians.  A lot of booby trapped e-mails come my way from those two countries.

Consequently, I have some strong programs to work on that problem and that sometimes means I have difficulties with some of my other programs.