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Electronics & Planes Don't Mix?
dirtydamo writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running an interesting story on the old debate on whether electronic devices cause problems on planes. It appears pilots are pretty much accustomed to handling weird problems with equipment, which they attribute to passengers' portable devices. More research is needed to determine whether or not this is the actual problem, but the article certainly makes me a little uneasy about modern air travel."
Say I need more tinfoil on my hat, but I don't doubt for a moment that terrorists somewhere are looking at a way to have a "martyr" on a plane disrupt the controls from the cabin using electronics. No overt attack neccesary; he would flip a switch, sit back and look forward to his 70 virgins that Allah[0] will be handing over in a few minutes while the crew futiley scramble around until the inevitable crash.
[0] Just an example, Islam != terrorism.
Trolling is a art,
Anyone with a laptop=possible terrorist, subject to immense scrutiny and background check.
C:\>
Just the other week we had the article on Slashdot about cell phones not working in planes.
And, after all, what's the big rush?
Planes are generally quiet places, where you can lie back, enjoy some wine, watch a movie in the front of your seat, have a wonderfully cooked meal.
I can even recline horizontally if I so choose.
What need do you have for electronics on that? I don't want a pager or a beeper or a celly going off in the middle of the air! Not to disturb my solitude!
And another thing, let's get rid of all these damn kids with gameboys.
70 virgins? Why don't they just enroll in college?
You get virgins, alcohol, [b]and[/b] meth.
Weren't folks on that plane using cellphones with no apparent problem? And I've seen DVD players for rent in airports as well.
Forget about screening for bombs - it's even scarier to think that you can bring down an airliner with a Game Boy.
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
http://www.amazing1.com/emp.htm
Sad I have to post this anonymously.
Ahh yes, modern air travel, don't trust it.
The only actual research I'm aware of on this is an FAA study from the '90s. This article is a good summary: Cell phone use isn't banned by the FAA, but by the FCC in 1991, citing "cell phones' potential to interfere with ground-to-ground cellular transmission." Another web site explains, "at altitude, a cell phone will light up multiple cell towers and may cause the system to lock up." BS? The FAA is going to do another study and they don't seem too worried about "locking up the system."
"You've got to ask, do you want to get there, or do you want to use your laptop?"
Both. It's a million dollar aircraft, and the ticket is expensive. Figure out how to make it safe. When they find themselves asking questions like this, how can they wonder why they're having a hard time making money?
Can't they insulate all the sensitive equipment from the passenger section? Maybe have a layer of lead between the cockpit and the rest of the plane?
If things are really that bad, they're going to have to do something to address this, and soon. They need to harden the equipment against interference, and do it NOW.
If a fucking electronic dictionary can fuck up a plane then we need to get better hardened electronics in planes! I mean shit, what happens when a plane is struck by lightning? The pilot just gives up? Or hell just put a farraday cage around the cabin. Who gives a fuck if it costs more, they should have integrated this into airliner design a long time ago!
This is a joke on the muslim thing: if you die for allah, when you get to heaven you get 70 virgins..and since anyone who's screwing the planes systems must be a terrorist...they die for allah...and get 70 virgins.
Right. Well, I hope guys laugh now. I did. Especially when I saw "Score:0, Offtopic"
"The most looniest, zaniest, spontaneous, sporadic Impulsive thinker, compulsive drinker, addict"
-nm-
A co-worker was using a wireless keyboard for his PDA, and was told by the flight attendant to not use it during flight. It was infrared, not RF. He tried to explain this to her, but she didn't get it, which is understandable, most non-geeks wouldn't. Solution: tape a piece of wire to it, and to his PDA, while in flight. :-)
each other if they are kicking out all this radiation. The real reason they don't want you to use this stuff is so that your hands are free for their overpriced coffee and sandwiches.
Well, let me put it this way; do you want to spend several hours in a plane with a possible nudge to some direction or go through several hours of terror as yuppies break down and explode in front of you because they can't read their bloody email, can't act interesting by talking on their mobile nor can they look up contact they'll never meet on their PDAs. Well?
Hate me!
Why not test the device on the ground if the passenger wishes to use it in the air? Busy types will pay a premium for equipment certified to be safe and allowed for aircraft use.
Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
to make the airplane instruments interference-proof? I mean, really, is it a matter of cost, or is there a technical reason? Can't they make the important instruments lined with lead or something?
There is no sig.
but the article certainly makes me a little uneasy about modern air travel
Why? The article says the pilots are used to it and know how to filter it out. Plane crashes are very rare, and the ones that do happen are nearly always related to either weather or non-electronic equipment failure.
consumer electronic devices can cause problems with an aircraftssensitive equipment, couldn't it also be the possiblity that the planes own electronics are causing sporadic problems? Why the hell is suddley my game boy that caused the plane to crash, just because they don't have any other explanation.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
I think their problem is a bit deeper than it seems...
I've always wondered why electronic equipment on planes was so much more sensitive then the regular stuff we have down on earth. I mean I can use my mobile phone near my computer and it doesn't lock up and vice versa, turning on my computer doesn't exactly make my mobile phone calls drop out. Electronic devices are specifically designed to withstand a certain amount of interferance, did somebody just forget to do that for plane electronics?
Just a note, airlines make money from people using in-flight phones, it's not in their economic interest to have people using their mobile phones.
Now, I know that not everything is as ideal a the FCC Part 15 rules are supposed to ensure, but really, do laptops really put out that much interference in the form of radio waves? How about mp3 players, or calculators, or e-book readers? I guess that what I'm wondering is how these devices are considered Part 15 if they wreak havoc upon aircraft electronics. Yes, I can see how an actual emitter, like a wireless ethernet device, a bluetooth device, or that sort could potentially manifest, but those devices, or their functionality within a larger unit could be fairly easily detected, requiring the passenger to disable the feature, or failing that, not use the equipment in flight.
Beyond that, if a Part 15 device is that big of a problem, perhaps the FCC should start testing things.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
... since the earliest days of aviation radio navigation aids. AM and FM broadcast receivers have oscillators in them that can be tiny transmitters. Depending on design, they can interfere with the VOR, localizer, glideslope and ADF navigation receivers.. and only a few feet away from their antennas. Add in the intentional transmitters on cellphones, the digital radiation from laptops with wireless links accidentally turned on close to the GPS and DME frequencies and there's reason to be concerned.
Or is this just more of the same: "don't use your cell phone on the plane, use the convinient onboard phones we've installed, or the terrorists win (because it cuts into the bottom line)"?
If you do not fix the problem at the root, you leave yourself open to other, possibly larger, problems.
the 9/11 terrorists KNEW that there was no safety-danger to their plans if everyone used their cellphones, this has ALWAYS been a telephone company thing and NOT a safety-thing. The airlines profit from forcing us all to use that piece of shit seatphone, and the telcos profit from not-having to make cellphone towers really work like they should and hand-off airplane calls like they hand-off car-calls. The fact that nobody questioned this airline-telco-bullshit post-9/11 is an indictment of "Fair and Balanced" journalism of all sorts.
me
Is there any college in the U.S. with 70 virgins?
is actually:
Are there 70 virgins in all the colleges Worldwide?
See???
Is=>Are, any=>all and US=>Worldwide
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Always blaming there problems on everyone else :P
This sig was generated by a barrel of trained kittens for SeXy_Red (550409).
Avionics software is supposed to be way ahead of your everyday software package in terms of reliability, but sometimes I wonder if the pilots are mis-identifying software errors. Maybe they are blaming it on the first thing that comes to mind, and not realizing the software has freaked.
What, he thinks planes will fly themselves? Why, they almost fly themselves now, don't they? Yeah, right.
The reason we still have airplane pilots, is when something minor screws up, a human can usually recover from the screwup. And something is always screwing up. You never hear about it, because nothing bad happens, and besides, they want you to keep buying plane tickets. What you don't know can't hurt you.
I can't wait for the first robotic jetliner, and the spectacular disaster just waiting to happen.
This is nothing new. As long as the pilots get their sleep, odds are you'll make it to wherever you're going.
Let's face it, airplanes generally last 30 years or more before they are retired. Now, I don't put too much stock in a bunch of non-engineer pilots blaming random problems, but if there are problems with these on-board systems and electronic interferance, they need to be fixed, because electronic devices are not going to become less scarce.
We routinely hear stories on the biomedical front about how embedded electrical devices are solving problems that traditional medicine couldn't, or didn't solve well. Since the Jarvis heart, biomedical devices have bee cropping up at an increasing pace. I don't think you can ask the guy with a life-sustaining device embedded in his body to turn it off for the flight.
Add to this wearable computer technology, RFID tags everywhere, smart consumables, etc., and it is very possible that in 30 years it won't be possible to just tell people to turn their devices off. If there is a problem, fix it. If there isn't, stop scaring people.
It appears pilots are pretty much accustomed to handling weird problems with equipment, which they attribute to passengers' portable devices.
Then equipment is DEFECTIVE.
Replace it and/or isolate it properly.
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
"No overt attack neccesary; he would flip a switch, sit back and look forward to his 70 virgins that Allah[0] will be handing over in a few minutes while the crew futiley scramble around until the inevitable crash."
If we design our aircraft so poorly as to not have any manual controls, then some re-evaluation needs to occur. There's a reason that we have trained pilots that go through fairly extensive training on a particular aircraft (and are certified on only the particular plan/cockpit configuration that they fly regularly), is because they are supposed to be experts in what they do. If an electronics bug can cause a plane to fall from the sky, then the electronics have way too much control over the flaps, engines, rudder, and ailerons, and even if the computer is capable of making adjustments, the plane should still be manually controllable. I mean, what if lightning strikes a plane in the exact wrong place and it manages to cook the onboard computers?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
How could a device like a Spellchecker possibly emit enough RF to interfere with avionics dozens of feet away? If the avionics were really that sensitive then planes would be crashing every time solar activity increases or lighting strikes within miles of the plane.
An airport near here in Roanoke requires a landing approach that takes the plane very close to a couple mountains, the tops of which are literally covered with antenna blasting high power RF across the entire radio spectrum. Yet miraculously that doesn't interfere with the avionics.
Just because the problem went away about the same time the passenger turned off their spellchecker does not prove that was the problem.
What concerns me the most is that these hundreds of problems have been chalked up to consumer devices, when it could be legitimate problems internal to the avionics. If the are simply written off to external causes then the real problems will not be corrected.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Crude EM disruption devices are trival to build. It's one of the basic lessons in the Radio Shack Electronics sets they used to sell with springs and wires for each component in a fairly hardy box. Of course, the set used a relay to create a spark gap, then it just needed a little amplification. A spark gap would be unwieldy and make a lot of noise, but it's an easy leap to a solid state device.
Odd electronics should not be allowed as a carry on. They should go in a shielded luggage compartment, or be required to be in a shielded case to prevent such attempts.
Speaking of which, in 1996 when TWA800 went down I was going out of La Guardia the next morning. I figured it would be real fun, so I showed up hours early. I arrived to see three times the number of normal baggage handlers, and they all have shiney black shoes. There are "new" check in computers being manned by the shiney black shoe folks and it's taking over an hour to get "checked" in per person. They are really giving me a hassle, when all of a sudden a hand signal is given and the baggage handlers form a circle around a confused fellow holding a brief case. The biggest "baggage" handler says, "Drop the briefcase", followed by, "Sir, what is in the brief case?"
Then four of the handlers drop in a group and open the case and begin looking at it's contents. It's got four shiny cylinders, a lot of wiring attached to what appears to be a timer. The gentleman begins stammering. They baggage handlers repeat over and over, louder and louder, "SIR WHAT IS THIS THING!?".
As he continues to stammer, I lean over and say, "Sales pitch; make it a good one."
Something clicks in his addled brain and he begins to recite his canned pitch about plastic injection molds. I was relieved, as were several of the baggage handlers as he smoothly attempted to sell us plastic injection molds and controllers. He was led off quietly for further, "inspection".
That was a hair raising experience.
We yuppies are busy and important people. We most certainly WILL be meeting those contacts in our PDA's!
Whats with all the anti-yuppie sentiment anyways? Previous generations busted their asses to send their kids to college so they could become successful young people and when their kids end up actually succeeding they're instantly hated? What gives?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I thought we had solved this problem with the "in-flight reboot" technology.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Hmmm, I wonder if the sex of these alleged virgins is specified. Imagine the horror of the deceased when they discover that in fact their 70 virgins are all middle aged, overweight former tech support guys named Phil with body odor problems. Muahahahahaha!
The reason the interference is not important: The Radio Navigation systems that are impacted by the intereference are no longer used to navigate and control the plane via autopilot. Although not entirely trusted by the FAA, the GPS is the guiding navigation system in most planes. GPS has no tranciever, and therefore is not affected by radio intereference
~ Maintainer of the Skajake Projects
In this century, I think one of the most influencial things that needs to be invented is a better type of shielding for electronics. And this wouldn't just help for airplanes, space craft really need it to. I don't know how true it is, but I've heard that space craft can't use densely packed processors because the electromagnetic radiation from space interferes with the extremely small sized transistors.
Whether or not the laptop/plane connection is true I don't know but I'd feel less safe flying with a modern laptop than an older model, largely due to the presence of WiFi ports. My paranoia is better fueled by the apparent ability of a laptop to transmit/receive via wi-fi than by some field emitted by laptops that supposedly messes with flight controls.
Actually, it may not just be money and the aviation industry, I suspect there is also an issue with the herd "I've been told, but did not question" mentality too. I walked into a hospital reception recently while finishing off a mobile phone call, fully intending to switch it off while actually visiting. I was asked to finish my call outside by a nurse with a mobile phone clipped to her belt, it was switched on and presumably there to receive calls. When I raised this it transpired that it was "hospital issue and therefore OK", yeah, right, whatever...
OK, that's two points, but can you even have two cru... WTF is the plural of "crux" anyway, which I guess answers *that* question. ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I, for one, would like to welcome you all aboard Icarus Airways.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
What kind of airlines do you fly with your fine wines and wonderfully cooked meals? you've obviously never flown southwest, easyjet, ryanair etc etc
Take the money you'd have spent on a couple of airline tickets in business class, buy 2 PowerBook G4 notebooks with iSight instead, and have a videoconference whenever you want one, WITHOUT the hassle of some overbearing thug groping you if you're an attractive women, or confiscating a tiny pocketknife (as if that makes the plane safer) while letting anyone carry a sharpened pencil (a decent weapon, IMO). Apple's iSight not only works well, it *came* working when I plugged it into the computer, so anyone can videoconference with 0 technical skill.
Of course, nothing will make airplanes completely safe (even absent deliberate terrorist acts) but right now a lot of mismanaged airlines need to go out of business, and that would definitely help. The 9/11 subsidies the worst of them are getting will only make the road to efficiency cost more and take longer. I say let Southwest & Jet Blue win if they're stronger financially, regardless of their lesser political connections in Washington, DC, but for now the best way to starve the major airlines is to iSight around them and boycott the hassle. Airlines will learn with their wallets, or maybe without them...
JMR
I'm NOT e-gold Ltd. and I speak only for Jim Ray.
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
US Airways is (at least they were in July and August) charging $10 in the main cabin for meals. Given the quantity (not much) and the quality, it looked like a major rip-off.
Anybody know what percentage of passenger aircraft use fly by wire systems?
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Perhaps most worrying of all, the devices often cause autopilot malfunctions, which have resulted in planes climbing, oscillating, or disengaging from the autopilot system altogether.
As a pilot, I love this statement. God forbid they would have to disengage the autopilot and actually FLY the airplane! What is becoming of this world anyway?
On another occasion in 1996, a Boeing 767 pitched and dropped 120 metres before pilots recovered control. A passenger using an electronic dictionary was asked to turn it off, and the plane's systems returned to normal.
Although I'm sure that the liars would defend it by stating that they never said that the dictionary was -responsible- for the incident. But who's telling the lies here, and what is their motive? It must be at such a level that the people in charge of airline security know the truth, or they would not allow any electronic device of any kind onto a plane.
Is it all just an attempt to sell us their in-flight distractions so that we don't bring our own?
Has anyone masured the RF output of trivial devices such an an ipod or a digital camera? How about a laptop? Someone here must have a spectrum analyser..
Why indeed are virgins better ? The whole "point" of the virginity --> lack of virginity experience is supposed to be linked with doing it with "the one".
Kinda pointless when there's 69 other virgins behind you.
Can some fanatic muslim explain to me ?
The IEEE had a very interesting article in Spectrum magazine 7 years ago on the issue of portable electronics and flight safety. As megahertz/gigahertz ratings increase for computing devices, this should only get worse (maybe until it gets to the point where computing is beyond "normal" RF?)
The conclusion was that there is little doubt about the interference and it is not just cell phones. The article relates an incident when too many people listening to the radio (there was some "important" sports match going on) did cause noticeable interference. It seems that in most cases the pilot can notice that some instruments are providing inaccurate readings (thanks to having redundant information around, different instruments would be affected differently) and it doesn't become a big problem.
So, by using your high-frequency electronic devices inside the plane you're making the pilot's job more difficult. During cruise flight it may be less risky and during takeoff and landing it is definitely not recommended. Personally I wouldn't even trust that much those skyphones. I'd rather err on the safe side. Read a book!
How come passing cell phone towers, HAM, satelites (GPS, etc.), cosmic rays, (... etc. ...) and even the cockpit systems themselves don't cause interference to the cockpit systems?
There's a million sources of radiation anywhere there exists modern inhabitation. How come these immensely powerful sources of radiation do not interfere with the aircraft but my CD player with 2AA batters can? And if a tiny electronic device running on two tiny batteries can disrupt an aircraft, how can it possibly be safe to fly? Doesn't that constitute a violation of FCC regulations? (Yes, I meant FCC.)
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"Please .. turn it on! Turn it on"
The most dangerous part of any flight is the takeoff and landing. If something were to go wrong they need the passengers ready to listen and react to instructions. My guess at the real intent is to remove potential distractions and entanglements (cords, dropped laptops, etc.) as much as possible.
When I pilot sees something weird with the instruments and blames it on a cell phone or PDA or something, that's really anecdotal. What I'd like to see is an interview with a cargo pilot. I mean, do pilots flying MD-11s for Fed Ex see these same little glitches? If so, I think it's safe to say it's not the passengers electronics causing the problems.
LOL..yes, we don't need protection from Superman, we need it from that monster that destroys Shatners plane in that twilight zone episode. Still scares me to this day..
I read some theory about the actual plane itself (i.e being a long metal tube) not helping with interference. Busses and trains are also long metal tubes, you can use your gps unit, your mobile, your bluetooth and wi-fi notebook and your cd player all at once in bus, car, or train with out them interfering with each-other. I was always suspicious about airline electronics policies, i guess 10 years ago they were just being as safe as they could which is fine, but now days people really need to use their gadgets so its more in the airlines interests to find out exactly whats going on and try and fix it.
Maybe its because most airliners are quite old and the avionics engineers came up with strange and un-regulated ways of doing things eg "lets send the engine temperature in analog down unsheilded line multiplexed with all the other temperatures at various random frequencies" i could see why that would cause problems.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Airplanes are not Faraday Cages. A true cage has no holes or gaps. In reality, one builds an "elemental" cage, which is still non-trivial. An airplane is riddled with irregular holes (electromagnetic ones, that is) like the windows. You'd have to shield the windows (metal film) and bond (connect) them to the fuselage. You'd also have to ensure any gaps (doors, landing gear bays, etc) have their edges bond to the fuselage. Put another way, you'd have to build a TEMPEST aircraft. Ask Google what TEMPEST is.
Add to this wearable computer technology, RFID tags everywhere, smart consumables, etc., and it is very possible that in 30 years it won't be possible to just tell people to turn their devices off.
And you think you can turn your digital watch off during a plane flight today?
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
This one always pissed me off, if it's such a danger then WHY TRUST people to be capable of turning off their devices. Most people can't manage their devices anyway, they are NOT IN control of their electronics. Not such a biggie now but later on with fuel cell powered ultra wide band gadgets...
I hear there's this amazing new stuff called "metal" that has amazing shielding properties.
--- Ban humanity.
You are VERY WRONG. GPS can be and is interfered with by a number of devices. One of the things that seperates a big $ FAA certified aviation GPS from a consumer model is that they are much faster to give an alarm when the fix is in error. - BTW, I am a commercial pilot.
As you can see here.
Civilian airplanes are built by the same people who build military planes, and they use the same shielded wiring systems, able to sustain the knocks of high-altitude cosmic radiation.
Even fly-by-wire Airbuses are highly unlikely to be knocked out by anything a hand-held device can generate.
The real reason why cellphones are banned in flight is to save ground networks from being spammed by phones zipping from cell to cell a hundred times faster than ever foreseen. Not to protect the plane from disaster.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I prepose we wire up Cowboy Neal with all the cybernetics the Slashdot crew was talking about back on Slashdot radio years ago then use him as the test subject.
That is presumming the robotic legs don't put him over the weight limit.
I don't actually exist.
Uneasy, why? Flying in a plane is pretty much the safest way to travel. It is a LOT more dangerous to drive a car than it is to fly.
I'm a private pilot, and even on small planes we can have this problem. The problem does exist. It's not some pilot conspiracy to stop you from playing your Game Boy. Navigation is performed with the aid of a gyroscope and magnetic compass and VOR stations.(GPS is a few years away from becoming a standard). Any number of electronic devices can affect this system. In-cabin devices can have much more affect on these systems then outside incluences simply because you're basically travelling within an aluminum faraday cage. A microwave signal from a cellphone will bounce around inside the cockpit a lot more than if it is outside.
It is particularly crucial that these devices are off during landings. Landing is by far the most dificult portion of flying. On commercial planes, they are often making their approaches in IFR (Insturment) conditions. It takes very little to make approach devices go haywire. You don't want this happening when the visibility is 500ft and you are trying to touch down 30 tons of aircraft in fog. It hasn't happened yet, but sooner or later some aircraft is going to crash on landing because some schmoe couldn't wait till he got down safely to call and tell folks he is going to be late for his meeting. In 99 out of 100 cases there may be no effect on the plane, but it only takes one crucial event to destroy an aircraft. Try to remember that.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Muslims believe in only 1 god. The idea of Allah being an array is blasphemy.
It seems that most of the incidents showed the auto-pilot or other "helper" applications having problems with the interference. The pilots are able to easily overcome those and fly manually. I think this says a lot for the skill level of the pilots that we have flying commercial airlines these days.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
...to use your electronic toy gadgets in flight as long as you step outside the cabin before turning them on.
I bought a cell phone two years ago at the insistance of my family. I planned on using it as my regular phone but in my apartment the reception is absolutely lousy inside my apartment, of all places. Near my computer, my cell phone completely cuts out.
I'm sure its a combination of the overall interference in my apartment coupled by my computer, as I don't have the same problem near other computers, but it does happen.
However, you are right, my computer does not cut out when my cell phone is near.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
just a note, but RFID tags should by design remain completely silent until powered by a specific radio frequency at sufficient power. Any other time, they are just useless paperweights... They have no power supply for transmitting, so they can't cause interference
It appears pilots are pretty much accustomed to handling weird problems with equipment, which they attribute to passengers' portable devices.
And in World War II, pilots used to blame weird problems on gremlins. Lets get real: Pilots, the vast majority of whom have no background in, or understanding of, electronics, are blaming portable electronic devices for interfering with their instrumentation. They provide nothing but anecdotal evidence to support these claims.
If there is a problem, it should be documented by the pilots and the airlines, the FAA should get involved, and electronic engineers should be paid to conduct an investigation. I'll be concerned when studies run by engineers and scientists show that such problems exist and are being caused by personal electronics. Is there commonality between instruments that fail (e.g., GPS units manufacture by Trimble, fly-by-wire systems in Airbus planes, etc.) or in portable devices that generate interference (e.g., Nokia 6000 series cell phones, HP Pavilion ZE4400 series notebooks, etc.)? These are the kind of questions that need to be answered.
Flying is unpleasant enough without further, possibly unnecessary, restrictions to make it even more so. After standing in line until their legs ache, passengers are practically strip-searched without probable cause. Unskilled, ignorant baggage screeners insist that people have laptop computers X-rayed. The screener manhandle cameras, laptops, and cell phones. People are crammed into undersized, uncomfortable seats. Every few years they are told to replace their carry-on luggage with something smaller because the airlines have crammed even more seats into the planes.
"There's lots of wiring throughout the plane that acts like an antenna..."
This should not be so. All wires that carry signals, rather than power, should be shielded.
You're captain for this flight will be the 10 year-old boy in row 20 seat A playing MS Flight Sim...
because what hunting rifle has a bayonet lug
Have you put in as many hours as, oooh, let's say commercial airline pilots?
And have you been situated somewhere where you'd be aware of such problems, such as the cockpit?
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"and even the cockpit systems themselves don't cause interference to the cockpit systems?"
The avionics do cause problems. The interference they cause is calibrated at the factory, and adjusted for. Even Cessna's have a calibration code pasted to the bottom of their magnetic compass letting pilots know what adjustments need to be made when the avionics are on. These are shielded devices, certified for FAA use, and they still cause problems. Imagine how your 29.95 CD player that barely passes FCC regulations is going to affect an aircraft trying to navigate to a point 500 miles away. 1 degree of interference can cause a 50-100 mile deviation.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
How hard or costly could it be to shield the cockpit from the cabin?
In many aircraft, the avionics bay is underneath the passenger area of the cabin. It's quite possible to have electronics anywhere in an aircraft.
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
There seem to be more examples of avionics malfunctions than can be readily explained by passengers with gizmos.
Helicopters are known to generate tremendous amounts of static electricity from their rotor blades cutting through the air at high speed. Maybe this happens in flight as the aircraft has vast amounts of airflow over its surface.
The flourescent lights onboard probably contribute more RFI than all the passenger gizmos combined.
Cellphones DO intefere with avionics, I've got first hand experience.
r " which continued until he managed to shut the thing off. If ATC had said anything, we'd have not heard it.
Whilst intercepting the localizer in a Grumman Cheetah on a dark and rainy night, my friend's GSM cellphone (which he had forgotten to turn off) started ringing. Although it didn't intefere with the GS/loc indications, it most certainly intefered with the intercom/radios - all audio was blotted out by an extremely loud "Bip b b bip b b bip b b bip b b bip b b brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It's called a FARADAY CAGE and is available for a mere $999,999,999.99! For that low low price we will CHEERFULLY place your device inside a grounded metal box.
Why would you expect a 30 year old aircraft to be designed to filter out a particular RF frequency from a device that had not even been invented? Or some unknown combination of several devices, used in close proximity?
Why not shield the individual electronics first?
Case in point - radar detectors. They are supposed to be passive devices, merely sucking in the police radar, and warning the driver that he is being painted. But also, just as any other piece of electronics, they output a little RF on their own.
Detectors have been built, and sold to police departments, that can detect this particular frequency RF. From 50 feet away, in a car moving at 75mph. Radar detector detectors. Virginia uses them. Look up VG-2. The state troopers have this installed in their cars, and can tell if your radar detector is on as you pass him by. A $95 fine.
So the detector companies have been hardening their new models to mask this.
Again, why not shield the individual electronics? Get them tested. Market them as "Aircraft safe".
If making that phone call is sooo important, buy the slightly more expensive, tested and approved model.
The problem isn't with the aircraft designers. They are designing a complex system to safely transport people. They do shield everything in the sircraft. The problem is with poorly designed personal electronics designed by yahoos who think emissions are just some lame FCC rule they barely think about. The "fix" will not be from Boeing and Airbus. It's going to come from the FAA and FCC combined. They'll tighten up the restrictions on stray emissions, and then they'll probably make a list of devices that can not be allowed. The aircraft people make a very good product. If anything needs to be "fixed" it's the poorly designed products from the personal electronics industry. You can add 2 tons of useless shielding to an aircraft (which still won't quiet all the noise) or you can add a few ounces to each device. I'm in favor of the latter.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Hey, why not just add an "Electronics" tax because you all know air travel isn't taxed enough. Up here in Canada, it almost costs more in taxes/fees than the actual flight. (short-haul)
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Just last Saturday my wife and I flew to Orlando from Atlanta, the cell phone worked the entire trip, my wife forgot to turn it off. The plane didn't crash or go off course and the landing was smooth as could be...
*shrugs* better safe than sorry I guess. Maybe a cell phone is what caused that Airforce Thunderbird F-16 to crash at the airshow...
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
I have a hard time believing that a little bitty personal device (like cd player or PDA or laptop) could cause such problems and yet other things which are much more powerful are not a problem.
For example, solar flares are known to cause radio disruptions and electronic interference. Yet we never hear that planes are grounded today because of a rise in solar flares. When's the last time a commerical airliner crashed because a solar flare?
If such little bitty eletronic distrubances are a problem you'd think that any time a plane flies between a satelite and its ground communications, the plane would go out of control and crash.
I think its an issue of revenue. The airlines would rather provide you with a service, like phone calls or music, and charge you for it. But if you're bringing in your own phones or CD players or movie player, well then their service is of no value to you and you won't be paying them for it.
I could also be an issue of a business model that is built on controling the customer more than anything else. Maybe I'm just parnoid.
Busy types will pay a premium for equipment certified to be safe and allowed for aircraft use.
Will they be eager to pay, say $5K, for a PDA that's certified? Getting electronic devices certified by the FAA is breathtakingly expensive.
For example a simple navigation receiver and display unit that should only cost about $250 in the normal world, is about $3.3K because is it "certified" for aircraft. A panel-mounted combination VHF communications radio + GPS moving map unit that should cost only $600 in the normal world is about $10k because it is "certified" for aircraft. Even a simple AM/FM/CD player that if sold for an automobile, would be only $100 at Wal-Mart, will set you back $1.6K to get one that's certified for installation in an aircraft.
To get any device certified by the FAA you are required to hire an engineering company (which also must be certified by the FAA) to perform an exhaustive battery of tests and measurements on the device and the particular brand and model of aircraft for which it will be certified. There does not exist any one-size-fits-all concept for certification in multiple brands/models. It is particular to that one brand and model. For instance if your device gets certified for a Cessna 172, you must repeat the process to get it certified for a Cessna 182. At the end of the certification process, you end up with a truckload of huge voluminous with every possible electronic measurement records in them and all possible interactions with other electronic gear. This is often thousands of pages full of painfully boring and hard-to-understand numbers and engineering data and formulas. There is no common sense included at all. Nothing but painstaking laboratory measurements. The certification process for something even simple like the AM/FM/CD stereo end up costing at minimum about $200K, and for more sophisicated devices like the aforementioned combination VHF radio plus GPS moving map units, upwards to nearly a million dollars. The most sophisticated devices like the new WAAS-capable GPS navigation units cost nearly two million just for the certification process alone.
"Odd electronics should not be allowed as a carry on. They should go in a shielded luggage compartment, or be required to be in a shielded case to prevent such attempts."
Odd Electronics would include laptops, cellphones, game boys, and anything else which could conceivably carry such a chip. Then we have to extend it further: can we detect such a device? What is required to detect such a device? How big would such a device have to be and what level of density would it have to be at?
Then we ask how much damage said thing could do and how complicated it would be to get one aboard without anyone noticing today, combined with how complicated it would be to manufacture one.
Seriously. We aren't talking about an EMP here, we are talking about something which will cause interference but isn't capable of bringing down the plane so long as a competent pilot is at the helm.
A degree of paranoia is a good thing, but you are being slightly excessive. Whenever you encounter a threat you have to ask if the cost of implementing the defense is worth preventing what you are trying to stop (as well as whether those defenses are effective).
In short:
If cost(defenses) + cost(damages_after_defense_implemented) * risk(after_defense_implemented) > cost(damages_without_defense) * risk(without_defense) then it isn't worth implementing.
(yes, you can factor human lives and whatever into this, it doesn't affect the equation).
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
How can an electronic dictionary interfere with an autopilot? This doesn't make sense. While there can be serious problems with transmitting devices (and even non-transmitting devices) interfering with communication, navigation and radar systems the idea of a non-transmitting device interfering with a non-receiving device is pretty wild.
Since there are so many consumer electronic devices it is easy to blame all problems on them. Let's see some verifiable and repeatable evidence. Several cycles of on/off/on/off might be a good start rather than "the problem went away when it was turned off" which could be attributable to just about anything.
Note that the FMS has to be programed with the route for a flight. Programming these things, at least, used to be fairly painful with lots of horrible little codes and plenty of opportunity for keying errors. If you screw up, it is often easier to reset it.
See my journal, I write things there
So, I can't take my nail clippers on a plane because I could use them to crash the plane... but my FM radio, which allegedly risks crashing the plane, is OK because they trust me to turn it off? Hooey.
If personal electronics really put airplanes at risk of crashing, I think the FAA would have us all flying handcuffed while wearing hospital gowns. (The next time some lunatics dirt one of our planes I think that will happen anyway.)
The GPS prohibition in particular is probably more to protect the airlines... (it isn't an FAA rule, right?) Why would airlines want passengers to independently audit their flight path, speed and altitude?
Then again, I am paranoid.
"More research is needed to determine whether or not this is the actual problem,"
no, they know its a problem. Consumer electronics bleed crap like its going out of style.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have no problem with you wanting to see scientific evidence. Until that time, you certainly won't mind if I continue to ask you to keep your devices off during takeoff and landings? You see, I want you to still be alive to see the results of that scientific research, and until I see evidence exonerating your devices, I would prefer you keep them off so I have one less thing to worry about while getting you to your destination. :)
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Microsoft:Well, if you were using devices controlled by WINDOWS this would not happen.
SCO:Please pay US $699 for everytime your airplane "accidentally" gets taken over by our IP
Cowboy Neal:"Yeah, sorry about that. My telepathy is normally not THAT strong"
Linux: Helping nerds look smarter since the late 90s.
Gee, maybe someone should invent shielding for these wires and instruments. I mean, I know that's a difficult concept compared to everything else that goes into desighing an airplane...
Does Fedex's (or any other cargo carrier) fleet have the same problems? I'd seems reasonable that they would have the same cockpit instruments, but wouldn't have any passengers with equipment. So they should have almost zero problems with avionics, do they?
Isn't a radio pretty much an input-only device? In this case - with the exception of emissions from the audio-output portion of the device - would not any AM/FM signals be there regardless of wheter a radio is on or not... or does using said radio suddenly gather more signals to a given area. I'm going for the former, and while they may have *said* that radio emissions were causing the interfering, it was likely something else.
One of my good friends is a pilot for a major airline. He flies the transatlantic route to several points. Recently, we went to the Apple store near my home and he bought an iPod for him to be able to listen to his music on the flight.
I asked him if it would interfere at all with the electronics of the aircraft since it was a fly-by-wire. He said there would be no problem and that he routinely used his laptop in the cockpit without realizing the WiFi card was in and on...transmitting and receiving (nothing since no WAP was available). The reason he wanted the iPod was so he could leave the big bulky laptop packed away and have only the "deck of cards" sized music player to listen to his tunes.
He did note that his aircraft is fairly new and they were built with the thought of the possible interference and that if he were to be flying an old 737 from waaaaaaaaaaaaay back when, it was possible it might somehow interfere, but that cases like that were very rare. He said anything built since the late 70s should be able to handle the typical interference which might show up in the electronics.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
Microsoft:"it's not OUR OS, it must be those freaks useing apple OS or linux"
SCO:"please pay us for everytime and 'accident' happens with our IP technology"
Cowboy Neal:"yeah sorry about that. I don't normally view porn on planes, but I got bored"
Linux: Helping nerds look smarter since the late 90s.
Man, next plane might not be brought down with bombs but with a jammer! Anyone thought about that?!? I hope the FBI is screening for stuff like this!!!
Maybe flight 93 didn't crash because the passengers fought the terrorists, it was the rest of the passengers using their cell phones.
But in reality, I have also been unable to find any scientific study about personal electronics and airline instruments / communications.
I would want to see the following questions answered: how I can use my "FCC home or office approved" device without causing any problems (the houses in my neighborhood are right up next to one another), but my iPod can somehow make an altimeter or compass screw up if I go a few kilometers above sea level? Are the airlines telling me that my Mac and neighbors' phones are better built than their jet cockpits?
Presuming that a laptop or cell phone can interfere with airplane cockpits, why can it not be detected from the cockpit? ("We've detected that personal electronics are on, and we won't take off until they're all off.") On the other hand, they cannot even detect a bomb in their luggage hold. If you cannot detect a signal from a gameboy, how can the device interfere with the plane?
It seems to me that it should be fairly simple (if not cheap) to find a correlation (or even cause-and-effect), then figure out a way to either enforce the ban, or shield the cabins and pass the cost onto the passengers.
Or, laptop makers could offer more expensive shielded models that will not be detected by, or interfere with, airplane instruments. Again, maybe some actual scientists could take a crack at proving this hypothesis first.
Now, let's talk about the unwillingness or airlines and governments to protect commercial planes against shoulder-launched missiles...
I was surprised to learn that they (Delta, South West and probably others) do allow you to use a GPS on the plane. You just about have to hold it up to the window seat for it to work but it is really cool to just check where you are at or how far away you are from the destination (you can also see speed and altitude).
95% is bogus!
it's jut the pilot doesn't feel in control or say better appreciated if the passengers aren't a little scared but busy. his job status degrades to a mear taxi driver or bus driver. but the pilots still want this air of being smart, handsome and intelliget projected on to them by the passengers. but it's a joke nowadays even you could fly a plane from N.Y. to say paris. not a problem.
and i'm not arguing in circles. every vital system on a airplane exist twice! all this fuss is just to safe this feeling of "flying" that everybody in the air-industry is trying to safe. but for many people bording a train or a airplane doesn't give them any differerent
feeling.
with every news story that lingers on longer then half a year in the media, and this defentely is one such case, is bogus. argue this way: if it really were a problem one would solve it. but since no expert or safty organisation is doing something to solve this "puzzle" it probably is just another urban legend. there seem to exist people in the world that feel better if they can produce doubt and fear.
never forget if you want to sell news never give them the whole story, this way you can sell "the rest" tomorrow" etc. or hint that there MIGHT be a problem and get them thinking. so they'll come back to buy the "solution" etc.
What I get from that article is that the Australian authorities are finally discovering that they MIGHT want to ban cellphone use during flight, and MAYBE even have people turn off portable electronic devices during take-off and landing. Seems to me the FAA thought of all that, years ago. Guess the aussies are a little slow?
themercurynews
Consumer electronics devices are designed to be cheap. That means that they will not add shielding or EMI suppression unless someone holds a gun to their head.
A portable digital device can radiate large amounts of interference at many different frequencies. What is even worse, the RF output is not constant. Anything with a microprocessor in it will radiate at varying frequencies and power levels depending on what code the microprocessor is executing. This makes it almost impossible to test for interference to specific frequencies.
The earliest forms of computer music involved putting an AM radio near the computer and executing code snippets that would produce the desired sound (interference) on the radio.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is a PDF file of a study done by the CAA in the UK (equivalent to the FAA) on cellphone interference against instruments. It was done in a laboratory to model in-flight circumstances.
To quote from the report (6.1) :
The tests revealed various adverse effects on the equipment performance from simulated cellphone interference. Although the equipment demonstrated a satisfactory margin above the original certification criteria for interference susceptibility, that margin was not sufficient to protect against potential cellphone interference under worst case conditions.
So until there is concrete evidence one way or the other, erring on the side of caution may be advisable - its also one of the last places where you don't have to listen to some dickhead chatting on the phone in a loud voice.
As a next step, consider removing the entertainment crap.
There's some value in that. The nurse for example may well know that her mobile phone can interfere with certain instruments but it is perfectly safe for her to carry one as long as she keeps the phone at least two meters away from such instruments.
She hopefully has better things to be doing than explaining that to every Tom, Dick and Harry who walks through the door.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Has anyone looked at the back of most consumer electronics lately?
Most electronic devices comply with part 15 of FCC regulations, meaning they don't cause
harmful interference and they have to accept all harmful interference. I know for certain that a
Game Boy would be hurt more by the plane than the plane would be hurt by the Game Boy
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Newscaster: "Fortunately, Dennis, flight 242 was struck in just the right place, giving a pleasing massage-like sensation to all aboard, and making the plane arrive in SFO a half-hour ahead of schedule. I'm Leslie Griffith. Back to you in the studio."
Slashdot is full of unsupported opinion so if you've actually got experience to back it up it's generally worth mentioning lest it be lost in the crowd.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Hospitals have a tendency to ban cell phones too. One I went into cited a case where a cell phone interfered with a drip machine. That interference caused the machine to fail, killing the patient. When the patient and his belongings were removed, the machine returned to normal operation. No one could figure out why a perfectly functioning machine would fail, until someone brought the cell phone back into proximity with the machine, and it failed once more.
I would really like to think medical and aeronautical equipment can, and should be made to operate in the presence of RF, but until it is, we shouldn't force the airline companies to take risks. After all, many of these planes are more than 20 to 30 years old -- predating cell phones, laptops, and whatnot.
I had a cell phone experience in a hospital. Mom was in intensive care, and I was standing by her bed which was directly accross a hallway from a nurse's station.
Mom had been in intensive care less than 24 hours, and myself and my dad were getting tons of calls about her status. As I'm standing there talking to my wife, a doctor is on his cell phone at the nurse's station. My phone rang and I answered it (a relative calling to ask about mom), and the nurse walked up to berate me for using a cell phone (which were "banned" according to some signage).
I pointed to the doctor on his cell phone and told her that unless she wanted to discuss the cell phone policy and its enforcement with me, the hospital administration, the news media and my attorney, she should stop bothering me and care for patients.
I don't mind a policy, but I will not follow one that isn't universally enforced.
When will we have airplanes that don't rely on outdated instruments that aren't properly shielded from the inside of the cockpit?
Another scary scenario would call for a terrorist or two boarding an aircraft with two laptops (one for backup). At some point during the flight, the primary whips out his Apple Titanium and compromises the avionics system. The hacker now has the option of wrecking the plane during landing or in-flight, directing the jumbo jet into the Sears Tower, for example.
This scenario will call for no explosives, no daily consumer items modified into weapons, no boxcutters. The terrorists won't have to "play fake" a hostage situation just to buy time, nor will they ever have to force their way into the cockpit so that our weapons-trained pilots could take aim with their Berettas. For all intents and purposes, the terrorists will never have to leave their seats.
At the terminal before boarding, the X-ray machines can scan the laptops all they want, but if they can't seen the software hacking tools on the hard drive (together with detailed schematics on the avionics control system of that particular aircraft, its vulnerabilities, etc.), then the flight is doomed.
There needs to be a better way of securing the flight control systems onboard against all forms of electronic interference, or we will still be wondering what happened when that plane goes into the Sears or the Empire State.
just have all the airlines chip in for a few cellphone/electronics-use-only airplanes, and force all the hardcore geeks who'll actually want to be on that plane to turn on all their gadgets during take-off, flight and landing.
if the plane crashes, then we'll know for sure WHILE having less hardcore gadget users to deal with on regular flights.
Why are most of the cables in aircraft still copper conductors? Wouldn't it make sense to have an all optical solution for all that fly-by-wire, navigation instruments and other communication stuff under the floor of the passenger cabin? That way, all the sensitive electronics is located only in specific areas which can be effectively shielded from the cabin. I mean, planes like Airbus no longer have direct hydraulic control from the yoke to the ailerons so might as well do the small jump and save the extra weight, it's not like they couldn't afford to do it.
Well, strikes me that with the sorry state of the airline industry, financially speaking, RF interference is the least of their problems. I predict that we will all be traveling by rail or ship after a few more terrorist incidents.
Let us say for the sake of argument that the various in flight systems on a current passenger airplane are so sensitive to interference from inside the cabin that all non intentional radiators must be shut down including laptops, radio receivers of any kind, etc. What does this say about the safety of the plane in question when confronted with the multitude of broadcast transmitters outside the fuselage that are covering the entire electromagnetic spectrum with thousands and tens of thousands of watts and various intermodulation products everywhere? Is the outside shielding of an aircraft really good enough to knock those outside transmitters down below the levels required by the FCC for unintentional radiators?
Although our concerns with security have changed since 9/11, the threat of someone deliberately jamming aircraft systems using an intentional radiator from inside the airplane has always existed. If current aircraft can not deal with FCC class B and part 15 electronics, there is no way they are going to deal with a deliberate attack never mind one that is specifically designed to interfere with aircraft navigation, communication, and operation.
I have worked on many projects as an electronics engineer where RF interference considerations from licensed transmitters were major issues as well as our own non intentional RF emissions. I used to be an avid amateur radio T-Hunter/Hider in Southern California and have seen first hand what powerful transmitters can do as well as the unintentional interference poorly shielded equipment can cause to excessively sensitive electronics.
Interesting that planes are disrupted by the tiny bit of RF put out by consumer electronics, but there's no concern about the powerful radar and radio waves broadcast by the airports, tv stations, cell towers...etc...etc....
I think it's all hooey.
GPS recieves *extremely* weak satellite signals that are very easily "destroyed" by other signals. These radio signals are so weak they don't even make it through a single wall, GPS requires line of sight between the reciever and the sats ffs!
Most planes were designed when consumer electronics was in the megahertz range or less. Now that they are well into the gigahertz and approaching terahertz, you get sidelobes in the radar frequencies among other things.
In the meantime it does seem to prudent to err on the safe side though.
That said this sort of problem must be difficult to analyze scientifically. They appear rare (100s in 10 years worth of flights in Australia) and I don't imagine much thought is given to analyzing the problem while it's in progress. Planes must be fairly complex environment to replicate.
Presumably in these cases the systems that display wierdness get a thorough check up after the event and come back clean so it must be some form of external influence?
It could be Gremlins I guess.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I am skeptical about this. I work in a hospital with "Do not use wireless phones in this facility" signs on all the doors. Yet, when I asked our BioMed guy about this he said that in order to actually have even a slight chance of causing interference of medical devices, one would have to place their cell phone very close to said "affected" equipment... and, again, even then, he called it a slight chance to cause interference.
Not that I'd test this theory myself... not in the hospital, let alone on a plane.
One great thing about Europe and Japan is the availability of train travel. Can't crash those with your cel phone, can you? With global oil production likely to peak and then begin permanently declining in a few years, maybe the US aught to get some rails.
ANd these transmit signals using magic pixies carrying notes that walk around the sensitve radio equipment?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I'm a private pilot. (We fly the small planes, not the bug "cattle cars".) I agree that there is SOME possability that your electronics MIGHT SLIGHTLY interfere with the navigation equipment (GPS, and VOR radio navaids.), it wouldn't affect the controls of the plane one bit. The actual guages themselves are based either on airpressure (pitot-static) or gyroscopic action. In either case, there is not EM interference that would cause a problem. Additionally, every system has a backup, and usually an alternate method as well. For example: While GPS is the preferred navigation method, if it is acting "funny", a pilot can use the VOR system instead. Completely different technology, completely different system. I think that people are making a much bigger deal of thiis than they should. Let it go.
All the posters who have written saying that they can't understand how their (fill in the blank) device can do this to an aircraft, well, I hope I'm not flying with you next time. Control, navigation and comm failure happen ALL THE TIME due to poorly shielded consumer electronic devices. Ask any pilot, even better check out ALPA's website for more information. There have been many well-documented examples of these failures if you wish to find them. And to those who still don't get it: all modern aircraft-every Airbus, Boeing models 757, 767, 777 are all fly-by-wire...no direct physical link to the flight controls whatsoever. (The Airbus is flown with a joystick, looks just like an Atari 2600). Do you think this system can't be interfered with? And yes, this is a situation just waiting for a terrorist exploit to occur.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
Part of the issue with electronics interfering with avionics is whether the data will be completely wrong or just slightly in error. If the data is completely wrong then the pilot can take over and use alternative instruments, land at another airport or ask for guidance from the ground. The real danger comes if the data is subtly wrong and the pilot believes it. It's much harder to build a device that creates subtle errors in the data. AFAIK the systems in planes are redundant, and some, like magnet compasses, are electronic-free.
This post can no more be deemed "troll" than its parent post. They both beg the question of whether Islam encourages violence against "non-believers."
Maybe, maybe not. The more inconvenient you make flying, the more people are likely to drive instead, which gives them a much greater chance of being injured or killed.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I'm sure I'll be lost at the bottom of the heap, but seeing as how the passenger section of commerical jets is basically a big metal tube, and we've already established a nice firm wall between the cabin and the cockpit, why not just go the extra mile and make it a Faraday cage? The sensors are outside the cabin, so they can still "sense", and inside the passengers can be as electronically noisy as they like. (Until they start interferring with each other) Of course you'd have to have something like screens over the windows....
This idea might even provide some shielding from some of the milder radation passengers are exposed to environmentally. (But likely not much, I suspect the soft stuff is already blocked by the aluminum skin of the plan, and the bad stuff tends to be more like gamma rays...)
I thought Linux was of European descent .. why have something called eurolinux.com -- if anything there should be something called africanlinux.com asianlinux.com australianlinux.com etc.
To prove that MP3 players are potential terrorist devices and thus call for their ban "in the interest of national security"
I'm joking btw...
I'm a pilot. I have a cell phone. I have it set to vibrate while flying, so I can see who called (I call them back later).
I've never seen interference with my instruments from this or any other cell phone activity.
Doesn't mean it can't happen. Just means I haven't seen it.
Oh, and by the way, we are all trained to handle such interference interruptions, and it's really no big deal when/if they happen. The instruments that you really need for critical situations (i.e. final approach and landing in fog, by instruments) are fairly inured to electronic failure (barring loss of electricity).
The Gimli Glider.
767 with no fuel=no engines=no power=no instruments.
Successful landing.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
A million dollar plane would be nothin' much -- probably someone's vanity canard turbojet for private business travel.
The little commuter planes everyone carps about are multi-million dollar planes. A 737 is about $55 million. A factory Airbus A340 or Boeing 777 prices out at around $165 million, minus any expensive wheel rims you might be looking into for the landing gear. Seriously.
If you want to purchase something moderate, say an old 727 you'd like to haul freight in, expect to write a check for maybe $5 million. The "previously owned" market has a lot to do with how long the engines can wait for an overhaul. The engines alone are worth serious change.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
use by pilots.
There are rules in place to limit the amount of EM radiation a device can emit. There are also rules on wirelengths, quality of wires, and wire shielding.
I don't see most consumer electronic devices being designed with EMI controls in mind.
However, there are literally tens if not hundreds of miles of wires in an aircraft. Most of them are data lines for the various systems. All of them are supposed to be shielded. But shielding sometimes breaks or gets worn out (when it's really old).
Since the wires are so long, it's pretty easy for them to pick up signals. And if they aren't grounded properly, (which happens) then the signals on the wire can be influenced by the other equipment on board the aircraft.
What people don't seem to realize is that unless their electronic device is grounded to the aircraft (along with the aircraft systems), then it's possible that the device will generate eddy currents (or image currents) in the aircraft skin and grounded systems. A tiny AC signal in the aircraft skin might not be much, but add up several AC signals and you can get an idea that things become a mess.
The possibility is conceivably there for trouble. No one has taken the time to put together an aircraft, put it in a EM isolated building, and have people inside it with cell phones going on and such. That's due to two things: cost, and the fact that EM analysis and testing is always done on the avionics that go into an aircraft. And when the aircrew tells people to not use their electronics, they kind of expect people to listen.
The possibility is real that there could be a problem.
As for cell phones working inside a plane...
That's because the EM wave hits the airplane skin, then is slowed just a hair while it propogates through the skin, and then the external surface of the aircraft becomes the new signal source (from the point of view of the outside world). That's proof that there are AC signals in the aircraft skin. Someone below stated: it could be that Flight 93 crashed because everyone was using their cell phone... that's possible.
... but according to your journal you won't play on my team.
According your your entry "The truth about Microsoft" the MS business model is flawed. Flawed or not, I have more business from their model than I have competent developers. When you read 20 weeks of unemployment and your ready to port your j2ee skills to C#, send me a message.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Why is it prudent to err on the safe side? Isn't it MORE prudent to study the problem?
Seems like if it's prudent to err on the safe side, you'd never leave your sofa. It also seems like erring on the safe side leads to "We better burn this chick. She might be a witch."
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Ten incidents per year (I wonder what percentage of Aussie flights that comprises) "all due to portable devices"... the article does NOT go on to detail that claim. It cites an anecdote in which one plane's systems are alleged to have come back online after a passenger turned off a device, then goes on to say that "on more than one occasion, laptop computers have been blamed for changing an aircraft's internal cabin pressure."
The incidents, logged in an Australian Transport Safety Bureau database, have been collated for the first time and detailed in the latest edition of Flight Safety Australia, published by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority."
Because the article authors didn't bother to include a link to the article, I'll assume that this is the one they're referring to. If so, this article does not in any way "collate" (collect) or "detail" them. It's a single-page article which is pretty much as insubstantive as its referer. It mentions a few anecdotes, then states:
So they hit the equipment with waves, but what was the result? They forgot to mention specifics, such as "the equipment behaved unexpectedly". The paragraph trails off with the statement that "the risk of interference is then at its greatest".
Next time you're on a flight and the plane suddenly begins to climb or pitch to the left, it's probably just the kid next to you conquering level 16 on his computer game.
Or it might be the wind and/or the captain trying to navigate the plane to its destination.
Laurie Cox, a spokesman for the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, said more research was needed into the effect of electronic devices.
Bingo.
"You've got to ask, do you want to get there, or do you want to use your laptop?"
No, I don't have to ask that. I've been "getting there" for years, while surrounded by people who use electronics.
I'm not saying electronics don't cause interference. What I'm saying is that as yet there is no basis for concluding that they do cause interference, and because such evidence would not be difficult to produce I think passengers are owed more by the airline industry and FAA than having to rely on these panic puff-piece articles that come along to garner readership by stirring the shit with unsubstantiated claims. If the airline industry or any regulatory body cared about passenger safety, they'd do a real study. Failing that, the next best thing would be for the airlines to err on the side of caution and say "we don't know if electronics do or don't cause interference, so we're banning them to be safe"; at least that would be a
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
How long before playing your gameboy becomes an act of terrorism?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
British Airways New York -> London one-way first class, Oct. 22. Can I get a job where you work?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
But cell phones CAN be a REAL threat. Notebook PC's and PDAs cannot *really* interfere with instrumentation, unless they're right next to the cockpit controls. In the case of the PDA - it doesn't generate that much RI. And in the case of the Notebook PC - they're pretty heavily shielded - by design. However, while a single cellphone won't do much harm... 20 or 30 phones with their signals bouncing around in that aluminum tube will amplify and can be a serious threat. Case in point...
Several years ago a bunch of press members were on a military transport in Germany. They were told to turn off their phones while on board - and didn't listen. When they went to land they *almost* plowed the plane into the ground as they were 5 miles off course. The press members *then* turned off their phones and - like magic - the instruments in the cockpit all showed that they were, in fact, 5 miles off course.
So let that be a lesson to you - TURN YOUR DAMN PHONE OFF IN THE PLAIN - YOU DINKS!
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
Damn. I'm converting back to Discordianism.
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey
But we'd rather have passengers undress partially and put their clothes through the X-ray machine rather than deal with any real problems...
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
The Calvin and hobbes from Sept. 15th emphasized this same uncertainty about modern air travel.
------
There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
On another occasion in 1996, a Boeing 767 pitched and dropped 120 metres before pilots recovered control. A passenger using an electronic dictionary was asked to turn it off, and the plane's systems returned to normal.
I'll bet the pilot was busy getting a BJ and decided to blame the turbulence on the electronic dictionary.
-ted
This guy, Ibn Warraq, is an idiot. He's suggesting the Quran is in something other than arabic, when it is. EVERY muslim knows the Quran is in arabic, and even IF the word in the Quran was mistranslated due to some freak accident, there would still be many hadith to back up the fact that it refers to people. See my earlier post above.
"Honey, if you really love me, you'll take out the garbage".
Multiply by 72.
Bingo, problem solved.
You see, all these things take is a little bit of education...
I have this strange mania of reading /. in my PDA while I'm driving (just put the thing in the center of the steering wheel)...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Wow, thanks for the dutifully technical, non-flaming response... many would have flamebasted me instead of such a polite correction.
To post an addition question: I suppose that not all radios are made equal, and that some would emit greater RF "noise" than others? If we've got radios that are as small as watches now, how much RF can they dish out do you think?
It appears pilots are pretty much accustomed to handling weird problems with equipment, which they attribute to passengers' portable devices.
In other news, sysadmins are pretty much accustomed to handling weird problems with computers, which they attribute to lusers' unauthorized programs that just happen to endlessly fork, rm said lusers' important data, and fill up the /tmp dir.
Just because they're used to it, doesn't mean it's OK.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
There are plenty of older aircraft in the fleet that are still using good ol' VOR/LOC/DME receivers for navigation. That's pure radio, no fancy digital doodads: VOR/LOC in VHF (around 110-120 MHz) and DME in UHF (around 300 MHz). Newer aircraft with fancy electronic doodads have multi-sensor nav systems, to which GPS is one input. Other systems like IRS (inertial nav.) and DME (and more rearely VOR) are also inputs to the nav. system. Redundancy and multiple independent sources for everything is the key to safety.
The FAA has no trust problems with GPS: WAAS is now in service, and many airports now have precision approaches -- i.e. they give the aircraft vertical guidance as well as lateral, so on an approach you can descend to around 400 feet above the ground using just GPS. ILS is the only other system in use that offers vertical guidance, and has been the standard approach system till now. Now GPS has precision approaches, and the plan is to improve that 400' descent to ILS-like descents, probably up to and including full autoland with LAAS. This will require a lot more fault-tolerance in the system, of course -- signal integrity, satellite geometry etc. (The FAA has already started phasing out VORs, and NDBs are almost all gone.)
GPS units are receivers (just like VOR/LOC/ADF), and can be jammed reasonably easily. The GPS signal is very low strength -- below the noise floor, and all satellites transmit on the same frequency so code-based spread-spectrum (like CDMA) is used.
You may draw your own conclusions as to whether or not GPS-only is a good way for civil aviation to go.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Do cargo flights with no passengers suffer these gremlins? -Roy
The wall street journal did an interesting article on this a few years ago. here is a link to a copy of it - http://www.panix.com/~dictum/news/telecom/Cell_pho nes_on_planes.html
The end result was that while there have been a number of cases where electronic devices were blamed - none of them have ever been proven. the best story was when a laptop was blamed so boeing bought the laptop from the passeneger and then flew the plane with the laptop on and could not find any problems
(1) Unshielded small devices often receive unrelated signals from around them and pass that noise through their own amplifier circuitry, and rebroadcast that noise, only worse. A pair of gadgets could develop a feedback loop making it even worse.
(2) Navigation avionics are trying to find the direction and timing of certain ground signals. Thus, a faint signal from ahead of the nose is now seen as a stronger reflected signal behind the nose. This can confuse the avionics, causing it to dismiss one or more navigation beacons until it settles down. Dismiss too many beacons, and you lose that whole method of navigation.
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AFAIK, Arabic did not exist as a language at the time of Mohammed. The prophet spoke Syraic.
The original Koran would have been recorded in the language of the prophet (in the legendary haphazard order). The Arabic Koran is a translation of this original document. AFAIK, the original Koran was lost. I could be wrong, of course.
The problem confronting the Koran in this context is the same as is faced by the readers of the Gospel of Thomas - the only extant version is in Coptic, which was a translation from Greek. Can an English translation be faithful to the original Greek? Christianity and Judism are both well acquainted with the perils of (mis)translation.
I read the Dawood translation of the Koran some years ago. The points made by Luxenberg, especially regarding the chilled versus boiling water, seem to be much more reasonable than what I saw printed. I would love to read an English translation of the German text.
After reading responses for a few minutes it occurs to me that our military has basically solved these issues on their P-3 Orion or E-2 Hawkeye type planes, right? Both of these use computerized data monitoring why flying.
Now, I expect that the systems on these things are pretty hardened, but I also expect that the engineers know what kind of RF radiation needs to be shielded to keep the avionics "happy".
Since we taxpayers have already paid to figure this stuff out, why don't we just have the military give this clue to the commercial airplane manufacturers?
I'd like to see someone land an AirBus in as bad shape as the MacDac DC-10 at Sioux City.
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http://yarchive.net/air/airliners/dc10_sioux_ci
http://www.airodyssey.net/articles/movie-fl
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Why isn't the passenger area of a plane a Faraday cage yet? Keep any electronic interference on the inside, keep the flight electronics on the outside... problem solved.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Jay J. Ely and team are pretty much the leaders in tearms of research in this area, as the NASA Langley Technical Reports Server shows.
You can get actual reports of incidents related to PEDs and aircraft events at The National Aviation Safety Data Analysis Center .
Also in Oct 2002, at the Digital Avionics Systems Conference in Irvine, CA, Session E addressed this topic:
Session E - The Electromagnetic Environment
Co-Chairs - Paul Cox, Honeywell Defense Avionics Systems Bill Larsen, Federal Aviation Administration
Holland
Can you explain why this highly paid guy is playing with laptops and ipods instead of paying 100% attention to his important and ostensibly difficult job (because why is he being paid so much?)
If he has the time and attention to spend on these toys - how about he spends it on additional steps to improve passenger safety and service? And by the way - if he is too dim to realize the WiFi card is up and running - how does he keep track of all those confusing knob and button thingies in the plane?
Makes me wonder what the 9-11 pilots were doing while the hijackers were taking over their planes. I don't remember - did even one of them get off a message that they were being hijacked?
Check out this data collected by NASA's ASRS. It details many specific events regarding PED (Passenger Electronic Devices) ... but I do agree with many posters on here that more study needs to be done.
N.
I hate to respond to a troll, but I feel in this case, I must.
If you had any idea of the protocol in the cockpit, you wouldn't have posted such an obviously under-informed opinion. I can see how, if he were the only person in the cockpit, it would be a problem. However, except during take off and landing, there is basically one person doing everything...that person is the autopilot. Then, there's one person monitoring. They take turns. It's really not that difficult to figure out, is it?
How exactly would you recommend the people in the cockpit "improve passenger safety and service"? They're operating under the guidelines of the aviation industry and applicable governments. Safety isn't going to be a problem I'd hope. After all, _most_ pilots are responsible people. Did you think he was listening to Britney WHILE he was actually piloting the plane? Unless there up there doing crystal meth, I don't expect they'd do anything which might endanger the passengers or their jobs. As for service, they're flying the plane. What else do you want from the cockpit crew? Blow jobs?
Personally, I'm really not that dim. Most would consider me bright. However, I have left my wifi card running, packed the laptop away (after putting it to sleep), and then opened it at my destination (or before) to no signal. This really is not an unusual event. I see people doing it all the time. Fairly smart people who didn't realize they could turn off their card do it just about every day.
As far as the pilots of the hijacked aircraft on 9-11, I think the consensus was that they were engaged in a circle jerk. Nothing like getting caught with your pants down, eh?
Please don't troll like that...and anonymously to boot. If you're going to be a troll, at least let your identity be known.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
I must say I believe I have a density of electronics in my house greater than that of most small to midsize airplanes. However, changing the channel on my tv has not made the microwave start nor has turning on a light made the doorbell ring. Electronic devices unless receiving and transmitting over radio frequencies do not tend to cause interference. How many radio transmitters are on a gameboy? On top of that there are strict guidelines about what frequencies certain devices can use. The devices can cause problems over certain channels but any sophisticated device can change which channel it is using (look at a portable phone). In the odd chance that ALL frequencies are getting interfered with that a device on a plane uses, to actually FLY the plane does not need to receive or send radio signals. I think this is an example of poor media hype for fear. It's not just sex that sells. Watch the movie Bowling for Columbine to see some effects media fear can have. Im sorry to say it but getting bent out of shape after flying planes for decades with less fatalaties than any other form of travel (walking, riding a car, train, boat, or bicycle) it is very irresponsible to paint this picture.
Any device can be easily mod'd.
The main saving grace is that the effect of the interference is too indeterminate and probably too ineffective for the risk.
Last time this kind of information came out in Australia, I recognised a name in a quote. I happened to see this gentleman a short time later. He was a high level official in the Civil Aviation Authority. He also happened to be one of my senior Non Commissioned Officers when I was in the Royal Australian Air Force. He defended himself by the actions of the journalist who was looking for any unsubstanciated claims by the pilots. Collection of anecdotal evidence does not prove anything. I've been amazed how high power electronics which emit huge RF like multi Frequency radar, HF and UHF radios all of a sudden can't affect the largely mechanical control systems which exist in a large proportion of the aircraft they were reported in. But now a gameboy does. I've also seen arbitrarily aquired video cameras refused to be carried in fighter aircraft. The reason, too much RF emitted by this model, regardless of what the photographer wanted to take for photographic documentation.
They hate the truth being promoted, but the large majority of pilots are merely bus drivers. They understand extremely little about the machines which they operate. I've lost count of the times I've had military pilots try to explain to me exactly WHY they checked things on their preflight and what they checked. Gee, your life may depend on that. Wouldn't you like to know more about it? They have their own cultural beliefs. The couple of pilots I know that have engineering degrees have privately admitted that some of their buddies are quite clueless.
It's kind of odd that no military has revealed plans for massive HERF guns to knock planes from the skies. The Russions demonstrated that they can own the HF spectrum at any time they feel like in the 60's.
Keep your little views on terrorists and their supposed capabilities firmly in your own minds. All you do is help Bin Laden frighten the technically ignorant.
Terrorists are going to use the time tried effective methods in the majority of times. Remotely detonated car bombs in highly populated public areas. They aim for the average Joe going about his average life, not the average Joe air traveller.
...on air freight?
The planes are similar, pilots equally qualified.
It should be simple to "detect" the presence of passenger carried electronics in the stats if they were compared to freight traffic.
Just a suggestion...
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
but turn on a franklin dictionary and the plane could crash? bullshit.
This is propaganda.
100 instances in a DECADE for all of Australia!
I don't have actual stats, but a very conservative estimate would be over 300 domestic flights a day (between 2 major carriers).
300 per day x 365 days a year = 109,500 flights a year.
Let's be even more conservative, and round that down to 100,000 (a nice number to work with).
So this would be 1,000,000 flights in a decade. 1 million. And they only have examples of 100 instances? That's 0.01% And if (as it sounds) those 100 are ANECDOTAL....
Nothing to see here people, move along.
I wonder if that "Let's Roll" loser might have actually CAUSED the crash because he was on the phone. I always knew something was fishy about that whole 4th plane business.
Someone please explain to me how it's possible to pitch to the left? (Hint: what does pitch mean? roll? yaw?) You can tell the person writing the article is an aviation expert.
What I find most disturbing is this article. It reminds of a CNN news story. Totally designed to scare.
I don't pass any decision on incidental evidence. This is story telling. Imgaine what a boring article it would have been if he talked about the tens of thousands of flights that were NOT affected. And of course you can see the VooDoo'ish tint to the article.
This may be a real issue and it is truely a shame that it is necessary to use fear to justify a position.
I would much rather see some hard numbers and real research done. But it today's age of CNN journalism is gone. Reporting is gone. Horror show is in.
Cell phones are annoying. I don't want to be stuffed in the back of a plane with 100 assholes yelling over each other into their cell phones. So this way the airlines can scare the idiots into not yakking on the phone. The FAA will back them up if someone complains. It's a conspiracy, but a benificial one. They don't care if you use CD player, laptop, dildo, etc. as those are quiet (or quiteish in the case of the dildo) activities.
You need more Tin Foil? Have you thought of your pet?
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http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem
Protect them like you protect yourself.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
No, the original Quran has not been lost, and no muslim believes that. Sunnis and shias may debate each other on plenty of things, but they both agree that the Quran is unchanged and nothing is missing.
You are right in that translating from one language to another causes much of the details to be lost in translation, which is why Muslims always refer to the original Arabic, and the english version is more of an 'interpretation' than a "translation".
While you're on the subject of Gospels, you may want to check out The Gospel of Barnabus which, if true, would prove the trinity wrong. Muslims seem to agree with its view of Jesus as just a prophet like Moses or Muhammad.
Here's my view on it: While it seems highly unlikely that personal electronic devices (especially those not designed to emit RF signals) could cause problems with a commerical airplane, I think it's much better to err on the side of caution - I mean, even if the odds are one in a billion, isn't it better to give up using your phone for a couple hours than take the chance? I've got nothing against people using laptops and things like that on planes, but unless you've got something really important to say, I think you should just keep your phone off.
How about banning cellphones laptops and games just in case you have a marketing partnership for in-flight communications/entertainment/advertising services? Nothing like a captive audience to drum up advertising bucks for those poor ailing airline companies!
If planes went haywire during sunspots and solar flares the FAA would require them to be properly shielded or use fiber optics or something. Why not demand that they use fiber optics for flight-systems instead of antiquated and vulnerable electrical signalling equipment?
As for the navigation equipment: never get stuck with data from one piece/kind of navigation equipment. Your autopilot should use directional beacons and GPS and inertial guidance data to crosscheck wherever it estimates a reading. There are hundreds of lives at stake if there is *any* reason to sound an alarm. This cannot and should not be left to the discretion of passengers. If there is a problem nip it in the bud, and make the aircraft resistant to that kind of noise! There is no other acceptable solution.
If you can really wreak all that havoc with a small electronic device, then why would a terrorist need to smuggle a bomb onto a plane? Anyone could crash the plane with a handful of batteries, some tape, and wire. Good-old spark-gap ultrawideband transmitter should affect just about everything! Wait until the right moment and *sparkety* *sparkety* *sparkety* *spark* *spark* *spark*!
Honestly, my bullshit detector is pegged here. It has all the likley factors: false inferences, ulterior motives, good reasons support an opposite inference. If there isn't enough controversy to support real science IT IS BULLSHIT!
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
I have it on authority from a friend who is a 747 Captain with Cathay Pacific that the only reason the mobiles and electronic gear (but mainly mobiles) should be turned off is that they feed back into the pilot's headphones and thus interfere with crew to tower communications.
Most of an aircrafts electronics is fairly well shielded. It has to be, as natural radiation in the atmosphere at cruising altitude is quite high... geiger counters definately go off!
The only scary thing he told me is that no matter how often they ask for mobiles to be turned off... someone will always leave theirs on... in some cases they had to delay flights until they found the culprit. In many cases they take off regardless.
That is pathetic to think the solution to the problem is to trust passengers not to use electronic devices.
Don't you think Boeing/etc.. should pull their fingers out and do some proper engineering?
Or do we have to wait until some court instructs them too?
It's about time engineers and programmers provided some warranty on there work, and accepted some LIABILITY.
All they need to do is follow what the military does on its aircraft. Use Farridy cages, Proper grounding and EMF shielding.
I appear to be wrong; Arabic was an established language and is the native tongue of the Koran.
However, I have discovered a resource that indicates that the word "Koran" itself is of Syraic origin and that Syraic teachings have had a profound influence upon Islam. From this we must deduce one of the following:
I was impressed by many aspects of the Koran, but none moreso than the assertion that some Christians and Jews will be allowed into paradise along with good Muslims. I wish that this fact about Islam were stressed more; perhaps all of this current violence would be reduced if the faithful among us believed that we would be dealing with the consequences of violence (and confronting those we had harmed) in heaven.
Argh. I don't even know where to start, that post is so full of meaningless misinformation.
First of all, a cell phone is designed to be an RF antenna, a Palm pilot is designed to be a hunk of electronics. Comparing them is silly to begin with. Second of all, if you're going to use 60*50mW = 3W that's insane. That would only be meaningful if the Palm Pilots were all placed at the exact same spot and in exactly the same phase so they constructively interfered.
Think of rain falling on a swimming pool. you might do a calculation that says that on average 100mL of water was falling each second. Would the effect on the waves on the surface be the same if you threw in a water balloon containing 100mL of water? NO! Of course not! One makes a big, central splash, the other makes lots of tiny isolated splashes.
The odds of those 60 palm pilots interfering constructively is about the same as water falling into a pool in exactly the right way to simulate the waves caused by a big water balloon hitting the surface. How likely do you think that is?
But all that doesn't matter because there's no way that a Palm emits anywhere close to 50mW as RF energy. I simply picked a huge number like that to show you how ridiculous your claims were. In fact, a modern digital cell phone (remember, these are designed to be antennas) puts out approx. 100mW. Since putting out that kind of energy is the only thing they do, and they require big batteries to do it. Based on that, a Palm most likely puts out less than 5mW in radiant RF energy, if that, so the energy hitting these wires 20cm away is more like 1/200th that required to light an LED.
If you're so worried about RF noice which may affect the plane, I guess you never move around in your seat, for fear of building up some static electricity. The spark of a discharge would be huge compared to a Palm Pilot. You must also never use the bathroom, because turning on the lightbulb in there throws out 60W of power!!!
So you're spooked by electronics. That's fine, go live with a tinfoil hat on, but don't tell me not to use a Palm Pilot on a flight because it scares you. At least do some basic thinking first.
The Arabic in the Quran is more complex than ordinary "colloquial" arabic. The difference is like Shakespeare to vernacular english. Saying the Quran has grammatical errors is like saying Shakespeare has grammatical errors; a good deal of modern language is based on the grammar introduced by both.
People point to its structure and form as a sign that it couldn't have been written or created by Muhammad(pbuh) as he was illiterate and had no history of poetry. Speaking of which, there is an open challenge in the Qur'an to anyone who disbelieves in it, to try writing a chapter in Arabic on their own, and try emulating the style. So far as I know, nobody has been able to emulate it.
And to rebut:
The plural of "crux" would be "cruces"
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
OTOH, one of the reasons I got my license was to take care of my own flying. Yes, I know that it is statistically safer to fly in a commercial airliner than in the Experimental Aircraft I am building, but I feel a lot better when I have the stick in my own hand. Besides my airplane will be better looking :-)
Additionally, a fairly quick experimental will get you from point A to point B often quicker than the much faster commercial airliner. Last year one of our experimental club members flew nonstop from the Denver area to the Tampa area in under seven hours. Cost less and point to point time is about the same since he could start closer to home, avoid airport security lag, and land exactly here he was planning to visit.
The airliners worry me in several ways but I think the idea that they are blaiming cockpit glitches on electronic devices may worry me more. This is not black magic and I know intermitent problems are harder to debug but with the numbers of aircraft flying a reasonable set of symptoms shoud begin to appear and be classifiable. Even factoring in the non-linear aspects of this kind of trouble shooting, we should get something a lot better than vague mutterings about electronics in the cabin.
death obsessed, terrorist supporting murdering apologist. you are a liar. you are dangerous and subversive. you have a right to say what the hell you want and believe what you want. but you listen here you coozed up bastard, we have a right to fucking hate your kind, and watch you closely and clamp down on your fuckerhead like no tomorrow. just make a move, fucker. ill be waiting. cut a check. send arms to your pals. preach you seditonist crap. we will clamp you before you can ever get a round off, you god damn fucking supressed homosexual prick bastard motherfucker.
Islam is a cult. All religions are forms of cults, save maybe buddhism, but Islam is the worst of them all.
If you buy that Islam and its people are peace loving, you are falling for Goebbels like propaganda. Its such fucking bullshit. If you cant see since 700AD that everywhere Islam is its being spread by the sword, and they liberally call anyone they dont agree with an Infidel.
No religion is better than selling your grievances back to you and blaming others for it.
So you, at this point, are an apologist that legitimizes bad social constructs by "digging deeply" for obscure nuances in buried language. Take a look. 700AD to now, no religion has changed less than Islam. While other cultures, even very recently, have modernized, these people on the whole are the least progressive idiots on the planet.
Explore. Care Share. Love. Understand. Bullshit. Actions speak louder than words. You do you fucking fire in the belly bullshit, and you're going to cost live. The lives of progressive, good, hardworking charitable people.