Slashdot Mirror
Cringely: Wi-Fi in the Sky
Boiled Frog writes "In Cringely's latest article, he describes his plan to test a wi-fi connection between his house and his plane using two LinkSys 802.11g routers. He plans to experiment with various antennas to see which works the best."
Someday somebody's going to have to explain the whole war-driving/war-flying type thing to me... I really don't see the appeal in doing all this seemingly pointless stuff with wireless just to watch a few numbers fluctuate on a laptop. (I'm sure a lot of you think I should be banned from slashdot for saying that though). (Also, who names their kid "channing?" or "cole" for that matter? The quality of child naming has really gone down of late...)
Wrong instruments shouldn't cause crashes any more than a broken speedometer in your car will cause a crash. Competent pilots can fly with their backups, or their eyes.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
At least he'll be using his own plane, so the only life he's risking in this situation is his own and maybe one or two willing others. Part of the reason why the FAA is over-sensative over what's going on within commerical airplanes is because if the unthinkable random frequency collision were to happen, it might cause an instrument to give a wrong reading to the pilot and the result would be hundreds of people being killed. That's rather high stakes to be guessing...
:-) Commercial aircraft use more sensitive electronic gauges, but my opinion is that they're robust enough to handle the interference from PED's; even if there's a problem, though, teh pilots are trained to fly using much less equipment than the plane actually has. Most people don't realize how much redundancy is build right into the regulations.
Being a student pilot myself (35 hrs cumulative flight time), I really doubt that he's taking any significant risk at all. As it says in the article, it is up to the PIC (pilot-in-command) to decide whether or not to allow the use of personal electronic devices, and just looking over at his laptop while flying poses just about no risk. On a cross-country flights (100+mi), there's maps to be examined, air traffic controllers to contact, radio stations to tune into to verify your location, a flight computer to use (think complicated slide rule), passengers to talk to, and increasingly, GPS units to play with. He's been a pilot for 35 or so years, so I'm sure he'll set up everything on the ground and get it working before he ever starts the plane's engine, so just looking over to the laptop to check signal strength and connect to the internet shouldn't take any more concentration than looking at a sectional chart to make sure he's outside the local airspace.
As to the equipment interfering with the instruments, small aircraft have instruments based mostly on mechanical parts. Heck, some of them don't even use electricity to spin the gyroscopes. Additionally, I'm sure he's flown in this area before and therefore is familiar witht he terrain - every pilot I know has flown over his/her home numerous times
Bottom line, I agree that the FAA is being oversensitive, and I'm very curious about how this all turns out.
Anywho, back to work.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
Sorry Bob, someone beat you to it.
But i'd still be interested to see the results of a bi-directional test..
... Part of the reason why the FAA is over-sensative over what's going on within commerical airplanes is because if the unthinkable random frequency collision were to happen, it might cause an instrument to give a wrong reading to the pilot and the result would be hundreds of people being killed.
I'm sorry, I don't buy this. If planes are so reliant on all these telemetry signals that a bunch of electronic devices in the cabin could cause them to crash because the pilots cannot possibly look at the instruments, look out the window, and figure out something's wrong, I don't know how any airline managed to stay in business or keep any sort of plane in the air before, say, 1995. Without GPS and the (incredibly consistent) global air-traffic radar systems, why, you couldn't so much as fly a plane over a country with whom your at war to drop a bomb.
Oh, wait, they did, and radar hadn't even become useful or reliable, in the early 1940s.
One of my favorite "West Wing" quotes is from the opening scene of the pilot (I think...), where Toby gets a page and calls into the whitehouse, and the flight attendant tells him he has to turn off his cell phone because the plane is approaching the airport. Paraphrasing, his response went something like, "This aircraft is equipped with a $60,000 telemetry system hooked into a multi-million dollar national air traffic control system, and you're telling me that I can cause the plane to crash with something I bought from Radio Shack for less than $30.00? Do you know how stupid you sound?"
I don't know, but something just doesn't seem right.
Meow. Now!
It isn't too hard to figure out:
1) There are in-plane phones that charge your out the ass to use them. Cell phones kind of bypass that. It isn't surprising that they don't allow cell phones in-flight.
2) I have read that cell companies say that the phones would confuse the cell network due to being able to "see" so many towers. I don't buy that as I have used my cell on top of a 250ft tower on top of a tall mountain well within the range of at least 10 cell towers. No problem as far as I could see.
3) When the terrorists took over the planes in 2001, passengers were using cell phones to make calls while the planes were going. The pilots were NOT professionals. They had enough training to steer them into buildings and that is about it. They didn't crash because of cell phones being used. Hmmmm.
You can bet that cell phones are not a danger to make planes crash. That isn't the reason they are banned. You can bet on that.
FYI: Pilots, especially those of light aircraft, don't use their fuel guages the way you use the one in your car. My fuel guage could read just about anything and I wouldnt' be freaking out because I knew, before I took off, how much fuel I had on board and how much I burn per hour. This is just basic PPL stuff. Most GA fuel guages don't read accurately anyway. Mine read 1/4 when the tanks are about 1/2. Most instruments critical to flight aren't subject to this kind of interference anyway:
Altimiter: barometric pressure
Attitude Indicator: Vac/gyro
Directional Gyro: Vac/gyro
Turn coordinator: Electric gyro
Airspeed: Pitot/static pressure
VSI: static pressure
These are all mechanical in nature. GPS and nav radios are another story, but it's not likely that a malfunction of either is going to cause an accident in VFR conditions. Besides, IFR certified GPS are required to have RAIM which would most likely be out if your phone were interfering with your GPS. My Apollo CNX80 used to report RAIM outages over Quantico, VA until a recent software update. They are VERY picky about signal integrity and the slightest disagreement between sats will cause them to flag.
Just as a disclaimer, YMMV in an A330. I'm sure that large commercial aircraft with integrated flight directors/fms/etc are subject to more problems from interference. Plus, it's not as easy for a pilot to understand the systems of a more complex aircraft/avionics suite and determine what's safe and what's not. I wouldn't hop in even a Malibu Meridian and casually allow my passengers to use a cell phone when I was expecting enroute IMC either.
I doubt that we are talking about a terribly complex set of radios. Don't worry about Cringely, I'm sure he'll be fine.