Wardriving From 1500ft Up

luciensims writes "Wireless networking blog e3.com.au is running a story about a few of their members flying a private aircraft 1500ft above Perth, Western Australia. They found over 90 access points. Details are here."

Comments

Defcon

[Null_Packet]

Rumore has it the winning team for the wardriving contest at Defcon 10 used a Las Vegas chopper tour to scan for Access points.

check here:
http://www.securitytribe.com/wardrive.html

and results from the contest here:
http://www.dis.org/wl/score.txt

Geez.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wardriving, war on drugs, war on terrorism, war this, war that.

What an aggressive society we have become!

I am a pilot

[FreeUser]

I am a pilot who flies a small, single engine aircraft and does so very, very frequently, and often for very long distances (coast to coast, etc.).

Cell Phones can and occasionally do interfere with the NAV-COM radios, but most of the time they do not. However, I recall one time when a friend hadn't turned off his phone and I couldn't hear the tower as a result, despite the fact that I was sitting on the ramp only three hundred yards/meters away. As soon as he turned his cell off, reception was fine, so it can and does interefere rather catopstrophically at times, when conditions are right.

I haven't measured VOR-DME deviations due to cell phones, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if they didn't interfere with navigational signals as well, when conditions are right. That could potentially be catastrophic during flight in IMC (instrument) conditions, particularly if there were terrain nearby.

In any event, alll that is rare. Most of the time cell phones will at most add a little static to the transmission or reception, and often they won't interfere noticably at all.

That is only half the picture, however.

The FCC has made it illegal to use cell phones in the air because one phone call can occupy a slot in several cells at the same time, vastly decreasing the call capacity of the system.

Two hundred people on a jumbo jet using cell phones could well equal 20,000 people on the ground. It clobbers the cellular system, and is sufficiently bad that the FCC has made a regulation against using such phones in flight. The FAAs regulation is basically "obey the FCC regulation."

Of course, if it is an emergency, FAA regulations clearly state that any (FAA) rule may be violated if the saftey of the flight requires doing so. The FCC might not be as flexible, but in a true emergency I for one wouldn't worry about it, and use the damn thing anyway if I needed to.