This is getting old, but I’m bored so what the hell.
You basically keep repeating the same thing over and over- “He may have pulled it off”. And I (along with others) keep repeating the same thing- Yes, he may have, but it seems very unlikely. No one has said he couldn’t have pulled it off.
“Day or night? Does not matter”- It absolutely does matter. Jumping at night presents special challenges, according to the U.S. Parachute Association. These challenges include
“Cold”- Not speculation. It was 19F at 10,000 ft. according to the flight crew (from this site, under “The Facts and The Myths”).
“Could have not pulled chute, pure speculation”- You’re right, that would be speculation. But no one said that. I said more than once that I don’t think he pulled before impact. I never said he could not have, nor did anyone else.
“They never found him or his chute. That part is fact.”- Hey, we agree on something!
Day or night does not matter whatsoever. He chose a night jump. Then he jumped. Since lots have people have looked for him or his remains, it is easy to think he made it.
One of the guys who recreated the jump, explained it was cold and windy and Cooper may have not pulled his cord. The guy recreating sure as hell did.
You can open right away if you have a stable body position. If you’re unstable when you deploy, you run the risk of snagging one or more lines on an arm or leg (or neck) or the container, preventing full canopy inflation. Or a line can go over the canopy, again preventing full inflation. It would actually take about 3-4 seconds- arch hard, look, reach, pull.
To be reasonably sure of landing in my intended area, I would take about a 40 second delay and pull at about 3,000 ft. If I exited at the right point, this should put me about half a mile upwind of my target. I should have no problem gliding back and making a safe landing. I’m assuming light winds, I would try to exit and deploy further upwind if the surface wind was stronger.
The special challenges of a night jump that I described in post #141 make it more likely that he would have suffered an injury on landing. An injury would make it more difficult to get away. That’s just one of the reasons I don’t think he made it.
Easy for some people. I know better than most people what difficulties he faced. It’s easy for me to think he died.
So the expert skydiver said Cooper may not have pulled his cord. I agree completely.
His original demands seemed to involve a daytime jump. He demanded that the plane take off by 5pm. But it was delayed nearly 2 hours, taking off after 7pm. And it was 1 hr 20 minutes later when he actually jumped, so clearly dark by then.
He intended a daylight jump; it ended up being at night; but he chose to jump anyway.
But even if the plane had taken off on time, he would have jumped at 6:20pm, almost two hours after sunset. If he meant to do a daytime jump, he didn’t read the newspaper that morning.
I thought just the emergency chute was a dummy. Did I read wrong? I’d have not given him fake chutes, because I’d have shoved a stewardess out to see if they worked.
The last/best documentary I saw on it (probably from the Mayday series, which has been syndicated under several different names) said he was given 4 chutes, 2 were left on the plane after he jumped. and neither of those was the dummy. So the inference is that he was wearing it.
I knew he asked for 2 chutes. That would make you think he was aware of the differences. It also means he knew about jumping. How many of us would ask for 2 different chutes? But still whet was the point of asking for 2. Was one for lower heights?
According to the site that Gray Ghost linked to in post #102 and I linked to in post #141, Cooper asked for 2 backpack parachutes and 2 front (reserve) chutes. As gonzomax stated, this suggests that he knew something about jumping. The fact that he didn’t realize one of the reserve chutes was sewn shut, and chose it for his jump, suggests that he wasn’t an expert jumper.
One theory is that he asked for 4 chutes so the authorities would think he was going to make a stewardess jump with him, and wouldn’t tamper with them. The “dummy” reserve chute was not intentional.
The reason for 2 chutes was to have a backup in case the first one didn’t open.
