Slashdot Mirror
Study Says Cell Phones Can Interfere With Planes
3x37 writes "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website reports a study by Cargenie Mellon University researchers found that cell phones do interfere with airplane cockpit instruments. The researchers came to this takeaway conclusion: "devices like cell phones 'will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers.'""
Maybe now we won't have to worry about ceaseless cellphone blather during the entire flight...
Tinfoil
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I'm not a piolt but I know a few, and GPS is just one of many systems they use. Most insturments in an airplane have at least one backup on board. Incase of GPS failure, there is always IFR, etc..
Cargenie. Sounds like something that can be an air-freshener, a CD-player, and a beverage cooler all at once.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
All I need when I'm trying to sleep on my flight is some yahoo yelling on his/her cell phone. I think people can spend just a few hours away from thier cell.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." Mark Twain.
I would really like to actually see this study. The researchers go so far as to say that in the future a crash will be caused by some portable electronics. There must be a way to engineer around this. They not only name cells as a culprit but also laptops and other electronics. How much EM radiation do these devices really produce? It can't be that much. How sensitive are these GPS systems in the planes. Is the GPS system the only affected system? By how much is the GPS system affected. Does it show an error of a dozen meters of a dozen kilometers or does it simply not work at all? To a certain point I understand banning cell phones, but other electronic devices?
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
...toaster ovens 10 miles away. But *DO* they? Absolutely not. The radiation just isn't enough. My GF's vibrator's EMF interferes with my brainwaves, but it isn't enough to actually do anything bad to me.
I'm sorry, but how are cell-phones useful 30,000 feet in the air again?
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website reports a study by Cargenie Mellon University researchers found that cell phones do interfere with airplane cockpit instruments.
The CarGenie researchers also found that they interfere with garage door openers as well.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
. . . who insist on using their cellphones after they've been directed not to?
What?
They should can just let you use VOIP via wifi enabled phones...then the problem is solved. Your not blasting out 850/900/1800/1900MHz. (2100 for some UMTS bands).
If they were testing UMTS(WCDMA), I have also seen that these phone really do have a lot more interferece.
Besides,
have any of you ever turned on your mobile at 30k feet to see if you would get a signal? I have, and I didnt. Much of the western US has no coverage anyhow. In the cities sure, but planes tend to take routes over mountains and what not, so there are not a lot of towers around anyhow.
The findings come as the Federal Communications Commission is considering lifting the ban on the use of cell phones during flight.
Why would the FCC 'consider' lifting this ban? If technologies like AirCell are involved, cell calls from airplanes are completely safe. If not, however, there's no point in lifting the ban, as an unassisted cellphone call has an extremely poor chance of getting through above 2000 feet (which would be during landings and takeoffs...precisely when you cell calls can be most hazardous).
Either way, there doesn't seem to be much room for 'consideration'. Either AirCell is used, in which case there is no safety issue, or not, in which case cell calls are both hazardous and nigh-imposible.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
On most every flight I've been on recently, I can recall at least one wayward cell phone ringing by someone who has forgotten to turn their phone off.
That most large commercial flights are probably carrying some number of cell phones that are turned on, and that there doesn't appear to be a change in the number of airline incidents as the number of cell phones has increased, indicates to me that the study is probably flawed.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Why not prohibit cell phones in any condition other than cruising? Certainly here, a temporary glitch in the gps system isn't going to cause a crash. If problems (or the potential for one) arises, the Captain can instruct people to shut them off.
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
No way.
...
I go on a road trip with three phones around me (not all mine) and a Garmin GPS and it works just fine.
you're telling me that a multi-million dollar instrument panel is more vulnerable than a 350$ garmin GPS I bought at walmart?
Plus they FLY THROUGH areas of strong RF radiation all the time. From cell towers to AM/FM broadcasts to something we in the industry like to call ***RADAR***.
It's just a load of bullshit for three reasons
1. They want you to use the expensive inflight phone
2. It annoys others on the plane
3. In the event of an accident you're phone, laptop, cd player, gameboy, etc is a nice loose projectile.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
From TFA:
"And despite the ban on cell phone use during flights, the researchers discovered that on average one to four cell phone calls are made from every commercial flight in the northeast United States."
There's always someone who thinks the rules don't apply to them. Even if there wasn't an interference issue, I'd still advocate a cell-phone ban on planes. Who wants to sit next to someone blathering away for an entire flight (and you know there would be people who would do that)?
Shouldn't airplanes (the software controlling them) be able to deal with bad information coming in from their GPS systems, either by shutting down, and letting the pilot take over, or having redundant systems that detect when a sensor is giving incorrect data? Don't pilots have to know how to navigate and control the plane without GPS in the case where it isn't working.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
...before planes had GPS, they dropped out of the sky all the damned time.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
When the pilot is unable to determine the planes proximity to the ground w/ out the GPS receiver....
I like my "scientific findings" to come in the form of published articles, not a note in a random newspaper I've never heard of. So I googled around a little bit and it turns out that this is the PhD Thesis of this Bill Strauss guy. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the thesis online, nor any papers published by that fellow during the writing of said thesis. So I'll be taking this with a grain of salt, as I don't know what the requirements on quality for getting a PhD at Cargenie Mellon University is either.
Unortunately, the same self-important gadget love that has people driving one-handed while juggling a phone with the other ensures that nobody will ever pay much attention to the cell phone ban until an actual plane crash happens, and is conclusively proven to have been caused by someone's phone.
Sad, really.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I'm a private, instrument rated pilot and have experienced interference on my instruments because of cell phones. I had a passenger on my plane forget to turn his off, and during the flight I couldn't figure out what the intermittent buzzing was that I kept hearing over the com system. It was definitely distracting. Eventually we realized it was his phone (I believe it was actually receiving a call). I didn't notice it interfering with the GPS, but I suppose it could have been and I just didn't realize it, and that could be a real danger if I was flying in IMC, especially if we were on an approach. Thankfully that was a VFR flight and I was not using the instruments for much.
And for whatever reason, on the occasions that I have forgotten to turn my own cell phone off when I go out flying, I haven't experienced this interference (and I know at least once a call had come in on my phone while in flight). I'm not sure what the difference between our phones or their service was that would account for that.
Daggone corner-cutters.
Ok, 'nuf of that.
So RF will eventually cause an accident? Are they susceptable to intereference from cosmic radiation as well? Maybe they should fix this problem by better shielding on the susceptable devices rather than making an already sucky ride even more boring.
On every single flight I have been on, we've all been told to switch off all electronic equipment during take off and landing and to keep cell phones off during the whole flight, even ones with Flight Mode enabled.
Summation 2
I have always wondered about the claims made by the airplane crew regarding the interferences.
First of all I'd like to know how can a cell phone link to a BSS while flying at 5 Km from ground. Well it's doable but the high speed would then hinder any real communication. I think.
Second, if such a low cost device can give troubles to an airplane, I would try to find a good solution as soon as possible because cell phones could be used by terrorists to do nasty things with airplanes.
And I hope that the solution is not to seize the phones at the boarding gates!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Do cell phones also "interefere" with SPELL CHECK?
Doubtful, but I would think that they could face confiscation by the crew and cops on the ground for it if anyone wanted to get serious.
My Nextel interferes with everything. I can tell if my phone is going to ring seconds before it actually rings cause all the speakers near me go crazy.
I'm really surprised by the number of posts already saying "Maybe now people won't talk on their phones during flights!!"
I have to say, I've flown quite a bit in my time, both for business and vacations, and I have never seen anyone talking on a cell phone *during* the flight. Plenty sit around chatting just before take off and after landing, which gets annoying, but honestly, have that many of you actually seen someone talking on their phone while in the air? I'd have to imagine someone on the flight staff would put a stop to that quickly.
I think the real message here is that you should notify a flight attendent, or just use your own skills of persuasion, and get the person off their phone should someone actually be using one. When its just an annoyance, quietly cursing the person might be ok, but with information like this I'd be pretty upset at someone endangering my own safety as well as the rest of the passengers.
Since Hollywood is the inspiration for many of these studies, I'd like to refer to the documentary Die Hard 2. There was a crash caused by a combination of bad weather conditions, malicous interference by resetting the ground level reported to the plane and the destination airport being controlled by terrorists. The planes with the people using cell phones to communicate with family and the media did not crash.
Until we start replacing pilots with minimum wage aircraft operator trainees, the crash conclusion is irrational. Pilots for commercial airliners have a tremendous amount of experience. There are multiple instruments as well as visual indicators that are combined with experience to make decisions. Interference from other radio transmitters is likely to disable a device, not cause it to give information that will cause a crash. There would have to be several other problems coinciding with cell phone interference to cause a crash. Concluding that cell phones should not be used on planes, as is the current policy, is reasonable. Claiming they will cause a crash is just looney.
I work for Airbus. TFA completly misses the critical point when it comes to cell phones. Cell phones are primarily a problem with fly-by-wire systems. This is basically the newer system of aircraft flight control (the older being reliable but heavy hydraulics) Seeing that wiring will also run very close to where the passengers are sitting electromagnetic waves will very possibly distort signals being sent to critical aircraft components. This is why we are also working on developing fly-by-optics systems. Optical flight control systems are not prone to electromagnetic interference but it will still be years before we implement them full scale across all aircraft.
A coupla drinks, maybe, but pilots speaking on their cellphones while flying??!! Ohh..I see what the article is about..Now that I've gone past the headline..
My Treo will make my Dell laptop and Polycom Soundpoint phone buzz if it's within 4 feet of either when I get a call. It's not out of the question that a phone in the wrong place emitting will mess with electronics. Or perhaps distract the pilot at the wrong time.
Who do people need to be in constant contact with?
There must be some cellphone rule similar to electronic bands that strives for lowest energy by preferentially pairing two cell phonies together so real life is not disrupted.
Technology now can make an automaton that will carry a conversation with some useless talking head with a spock ear phone. I suggest that planes be equipped with an interceptor device that talks to the sheep that can't be without continuous chatter.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
My RAZR does that too!
For a while I thought I was a psyker and was actually utilizing precog, and it was manifesting as "speaker noise". But then a coworker said she heard it too, and she's so dumb she can't be psychic. It's debateable whether she's even sentient, if you ask me. Which you didn't. But you were going to. Hey, maybe I'm psychic!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
No, they could face arrest on federal charges, in the U.S., for failure to follow the directions of a flight crew in the execution of their duties.
The question is, can GSM phones (using the 850, 900, 1800, or 1900 MHz bands) actually interfere with GPS, which is on a completely different frequency? Civil GPS is currently on 1575.42 MHz and 1227.60 MHz - far enough away from the cellphone frequency bands that any well-designed GPS reciever should not be bothered by GSM.
I doubt it.
Surely the output of all those cellphone towers and cellphones would cause trouble for land-based GPS recievers if this was actually an issue? (They don't)
They sure can interfere with poorly isolated audio equipment though.
Putting moderation advice in your
Keep in mind... this is from the Putz Gazzette.
Forget taking it with a grain of salt, take it with a 20 lb bag of road salt.
*is from pittsburgh*
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
This is cobblers, and even it it wasn't the correct answer is to shield the cockpit, not rely on everyone obeying the stewardess.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
(Spitzer, 1987) Spitzer CL. 1987. Digital Avionics Systems, New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Kayton, M., "Navigation Systems". Chapter 13 of THE AVIONICS HANDBOOK edited by C.R. Spitzer. CRC
Press, 2001 and Second Edition 2006.
I thought that all avionics systems were shielded from rouge electromatic signals that may cause interference.
Any Nextel clients? then you know their phones are crazy... If standing near a rack of UPSs alrams will churp, stand next to a tv while in 2way or phone call, screen gets fuzzy, stand next to a speaker .. etc etc... funny i only have this problem with nextel...
Last time i checked... cell phones require towers or other "recieving/transmitting agents (land based) who you gonna call at 30k? and if you got 5 bars, let me know who your provider is.
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
This is pretty amusing, really. Commercial aircraft flew just fine, and with an excellent safety record for over 50 years before GPS technology was introduced.
Then, the GPS system was added - ostensibly as an aid to safe navigation. But the quote in the summary implies that it has become a single point of failure, which can result in an accident. ("CAUTION: Loss of aircraft may occur").
I know this article is about cellphones, not GPS systems. But am I the only one who has a vision of a dog chasing its tail? Features are failures, as the saying goes.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Assuming they have found something here, at some point you need to accept that one in a bazillion flights is going to crash because of interference and let me play my Nintendo DS on the plane. We already accept that a lot more than one in a bazillion crash because of mechanical failure.
Let's say I'm willing to pay $10 to play my DS, I'm willing to wager those $10 spend on extra maintenance will prevent more accidents than the fact that I'm playing my DS.
So long as there are no jackasses talking on their phone, I'll be ok with the reasoning. I might even be willing to accept some pseudo science...
It is a small number, but it is non-zero.
Especially worrying are the cases where the glideslope indicators were being "misled" because of apparent electronic interference from the back.
This was also discussed at length on PPRuNe a while ago.
Cthulhu Barata Nikto
Cell phones have to be turned off for the duration of the flight. Nobody's yacking until you land, and then there's a veritable symphony of cell phones turning on.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I thought this was known for years now...why else are you not to switch on your cell phone during flights? just for fun?
How much similar EM radiation is coming off the plane itself and all its integral electronics?
I had this happen in a hospital waiting room years ago. I knew my battery was shot, so I asked at reception if I could plug in somewhere. "Oh, no, this is a HOSPITAL. We have VERY sensitive equipment in here. We can't have computers running." I sort of chuckled and said "yes, while the first two are true, uhm, [pointing to the several commodity computers on the desk, complete with massive CRTs], what are those strange devices right there? I bet this hospital has LOTS of those." They got in a complete huff and stood their ground, "just because, we just can't."
With the amount of EM radiation surrounding your average airport and with landing being the absolute most critical point for this equipment, how the hell can they certify landing-via-GPS if the radiation from a fricken laptop could be catastrophic? If true, the market for backpack EMP weapons is going to skyrocket.
I.e. it's not that they're interfering with the instruments, it's that they're making you unable to hear announcements during the two most dangerous parts of a flight.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
one, nobody has shown a close call yet in practice.
two, the original source is of, ahhhh, developing trust, and not availiable for independent study.
puts this in the realm of "anomalous results in deuterated metals," shall we say.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The phones that use CDMA (Verizon for ex.) transmit continuously and don't need such a maximum power output as GSM phones. I have a CDMA phone now and there is no interference, I even tried putting it very close the speakers or to the motherboad.
So the problem is of course, which cell phones were used in the study? GSM phones cause interference even with my computer. It seems that if the said PhD student used only CDMA phones, he would not have had much of a thesis to write. I hope he really clarified the difference and used a good mix of cell phone technologies to study interference. I could not find his actual thesis, so as far as I am concerned, this study is just as valid as a fairy tale.
The good news that most companies that use GSM will be forced to move to CDMA (UMTS, WCDMA), because CDMA uses the available spectrum more efficiently. So in a about 5 years perhaps the situation will be different, but there will also be more people using cell phones -- so who knows...
If mobile phones interfere with GPS, how can Mitec release a phone with built-in GPS??? http://www.supergps.co.uk/mio-a701-integrated-gps- handheld-mobile-pc-p-375.html?gclid=CIa_6J2SvoMCFU l4EQodfkJ2Dg
I have no mod points with which to mod this FUNNY.
that a cell phone could cause a crash, they would confiscate them at the gate. Its a BS proposition.
That said, I am a person who travels by air frequently, and the last thing I want is some person sitting next to me screaming into his cell phone. The once in a blue moon someone uses that 27.00/minute phone in the seat back is enough. Some self important guy uses his cell to call home and bitch at his employee/vendor/wife/kid/dog, and I'd punch him in the nose.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
There's nothing more irritating for a pilot than to be told that an airplane is going to fall out of the sky becuase somebody's using a cellphone. That's total BS! I fly aircraft with advanced avionics regularly and I've never seen a single example where a mobile telephone left on will interfere with anything.
A modern jetliner has redundant GPS receivers, fuel systems, hydraulic systems, etc. If a 767 can run out of fuel and the pilot land the aircraft safely using non-powered backup instruments and almost no hydraulic power, which has happened, then some bonehead leaving their cellphone on isn't going to pose much of a problem.
(Quoting from memory)
Toby Ziegler, to Flight Attendant:
"We're flying in a Lockheed Series L1011. It came off the line 20 months ago. It carries a Sim-5 transponder tracking system. Are you telling me I can flummox this thing with something I bought at Radio Shack?"
'Nuff Said
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
Otherwise, how's about we shield the cockpit and other critical electronic systems, right away.
I read in an old British study that this is only a problem if the cell phone weighs more than a duck.
A polar bear will, in all likelihood, someday choke on a penguin.
Does anyone other than *you* really care?
> "devices like cell phones 'will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers.'"
"devices like cell phones 'will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical safety equipment such as fire detectors"
Yeah, given "someday" can happen from now to the end of the universe, and the vagueness of "devices like" and "instruments such as". It WILL certainly happen!
Someday a device like a tinfoil hat will in all likelihood save something such as someone's life. (and now that I read this, it sounds like it can, in all likelihood, mean the opposite of what I tried to say)
Further study by Y-Crate Heavy Industries indicates that: "...devices like cell phones will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by pissing off the other passengers to the point where in-air rioting occurs."
Amtrak's Quiet Car is a success for a reason. People are increasingly irritated by rude cellphone users to the point where I've seen encounters between passengers on trains prompted by someone refusing to exchange their "cellphone voice" for their "indoor voice". It is also the reason why I, and a lot of people I know, refuse to go to the movies anymore. The rude minority is being catered to, while the rest of us are expected to suck it up because for some reason, management is more afraid of losing the rude cellphone user as a customer, rather then the 10 people ready to smash their phone to bits, demand a refund and never come back.
Anyone that has a Cingular (GSM) phone has probably noticed the trademark buzzing sound that they cause all nearby audio equipment to make before/during a phone call. Granted most avionics cables are shielded I would imagine, but anything that buzzing sound leaks into has GOTTA be affected somehow. Yes, a laptop isn't going to have the same ERP as a cellphone, unless Pointy Haired Boss doesn't realize that his new cellular broadband adapter is just a cellphone in a PC card...
So, your cell phone will interfere with the GPS in the cabin, but not with the GPS INSIDE THE CELL PHONE .
Shenanigans.
I don't understand. I thought this myth had already been debunked. If what the researchers say is true then why have SAS in Scandinavia and Lufthansa in Germany already started to install picocells from a company called WirelessCabin in planes so that passengers can use their own cell phones in a controlled way during the flight???
"If you will check the seat pocket in front of you, you will find a gag contained in sanitized bag. You are require by regulation to wear the gag for the duration of the flight. Welcome to Freedom Air!"
Is a blathering idiot on a cell phone more annoying than a blathering idiot
talking to his neighbor?
Hmmm, let's see if I understand this right. A cell phone can bring down an aircraft......... and yet....... aircraft routinely get struck by lightning and that doesn't interfere with ANY aircraft electronics?
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Very interesting.
As someone who flies between a handful and a dozen times a year, with both a cell phone and a two-way pager, I'll note that while I do turn them off, the pager in particular is susceptible to turning on through any inadvertent button press, and I've found it on once or twice over the years when we got to our destination. The phone, thankfully, hasn't done that, but on our last flight, it (startlingly) turned itself on to make quite a racket, at 30000 feet, because it had a recurring alarm set at that time. I turned off the alarm and it promptly turned back off, but I got the evil eye from a bunch of other passengers. (Cingular/Sony Ericsson T616)
I have noticed, however, that if I set my cell phone near a Cisco 7960 IP phone, I will periodically hear little bursts of interference from the 7960's speaker, and to a lesser extent I've heard the same thing from some car stereos. My guess is that the phone is searching for the cell tower, and putting out at full strength (we're in a poorly covered area).
people will continue to do it with thoughts like this in their minds:
"well they were just idiots..."
"I bet they were lying..."
"It won't happen if I make just this one little call..."
"I bet the plane won't really crash..."
"hey, they didn't actually take the phone away, so if we crash it'll be their fault...
"... and I can sue!"
how many common rationalizations can you think of that people commonly use to avoid responsibility or make the convenient not illegal?
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Just ask them to take their call outside. Along with the smokers and people with kids.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The skin of an airplane makes a good Faraday cage, except for the windows. Transmitters on the inside have an advantage over outside ones when it comes to causing interference.
>the correct answer is to shield the cockpit, not rely on everyone obeying the stewardess.
Good insight. You'd also have to look at the shielding of the miles of wiring running through the passenger compartment, so it does get harder, but counting on hundreds of people to all do the right thing millions of times in a row is not sane safety engineering.
Next to locked cockpit doors this seems like a no-brainer. Sure, it will be costly to fix, but not as costly as a couple downed aircraft.
I have an LG 1300 with Cingular and whenever I go near speakers, they start to crackle and go 'blip blip blip'. It does it even if im not on the phone. But usually I have to be within 2-3 feet of the speakers. Sometimes it can happen across the room. From what i've gathered it's just the phone monitoring its reception and this causes static to whatever speakers are near. And yeah, when I go on flights I double and triple check to make sure its off. The last thing I want to do is die because my cell phone lost a bar of reception.
people who want you to believe you can make a cell phone call at significant altitude. I don't buy it. Also, I'd like to mention that there is plenty of room for error in their study in that he did a blind experiement with passengers who were not participating. Thus, he has no idea whether anyone actually even had cell phones on or not, just that he saw the waveforms that are indicative of cell phone RF. I'm curious whether or not the plane had wireless on it already, or whether he was passing over and picking up cell tower radiation. Granted, I'm taking a narrow approach to his study, but I am slightly appauled by his lack of consideration for all the factors. By the way, someone should link this to the more tech oriented article on ieee.org, http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069/5
After a really obnoxious flying experience a while back, I've given up on air travel for my Northeast Corridor (Boston/NYC/DC) trips and now just take Amtrak everwhere. When you include the time spent getting to the airport, which always tend to be out in the ass-end of nowhere, the ritual goosing of security, and the seemingly ubquitous delays, I've found rail travel to be just as fast.
... they have quiet cars. I don't know how long they've been doing this for, but it's a great idea. Generally it's either the first or last car on the train, and the rules are you can't use a cellphone (for voice) and you can't talk above a whisper there. It's kind of like travelling in a library. And the train conductors actually enforce it, miraculously enough. I actually saw a guy get asked to leave because he was on his cellphone, attempt to argue with the conductor, and get thrown off the train at the next stop. (Note to self: do not fuck with train conductors, because unlike on an airplane, they can leave you stuck somewhere.)
And the best part (and what relates to the topic here)
I'm not sure how you'd replicate something like this on an airplane, but it really makes the whole experience a lot more pleasant. I'd much rather spend three hours in a quiet train car, working on my laptop and using the internet through my GPRS data-capable phone, than spend one hour in a plane cabin between some fat bastard who's oozing across the armrest and a screaming infant.
Hopefully by the time that cellphones are allowed on planes -- which will happen, eventually -- they'll take a cue from the railroads and at least have a "No Cellphone" section for people to go to.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I have watched people in first class (and back with me in the cheap seats) jabbering away on cell phones. It was irritating once because the rather large woman was also quite loud and spent the entire flight engaged in a conversation that was probably not suitable for the public. I was six rows away and heard her--which you probably know is no small feat.
Oddly enough, the plane still managed to find its way.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Toby Ziegler, to Flight Attendant:
"We're flying in a Lockheed Series L1011. It came off the line 20 months ago. It carries a Sim-5 transponder tracking system. Are you telling me I can flummox this thing with something I bought at Radio Shack?"
'Nuff Said
Huh? The last L-1011 to be built was made in 1984.
Seriously. If it's really an issue then there is no choice but to address the problem in the instruments. They are not going to ban cell phones from the planes and when they are there they are going to be used either intentionally or accidentally.
It's the same situation in hospitals - If cell phones can interfere with medical equipment then people's lives are at risk and they should redesign the equipment... not try in vain to beg everyone to remember to turn off their cell phones.
It was worded it such a way that my colleague and me were wondering if they were indeed monitoring the GSM frequencies within the airframe.
On the other hand, the number of calls already made on the surveyed flights kind of prove the added risk of mobile phones to the control of the plane is negligent. With a cell base station on board that risk is even lower due to the low power needed to communicate to such a nearby station.
which leaves us with the nuisance factor, maybe only texting should be allowed.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I'm hoping it gives cabin crew the right to pepper spray and forcibly restrain them, but then I'm just being hopeful.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
You mean all these days the flight crew has been warning us based on.. err.. a guess?
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
Here is some more info about the study. http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases06/060228_cellphone. html
Excerpt:
"Strauss is an expert in aircraft electromagnetic compatibility at the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Md.
With support from the Federal Aviation Administration, three major airlines and the Transportation Security Agency, EPP researchers crisscrossed the northeast United States on commercial flights, monitoring radio emissions from passenger use of cell phones and other electronic devices. They tracked these radio emissions via a broadband antenna attached to a compact portable spectrum analyzer that fit into an innocuous carry-on bag."
And for those saying "Carnegie what?" look here:
http://www.cmu.edu/clips/rankings.html
We are a top university in pretty much everything, especially tech and EPP. A Phd from here means something.
I have a good friend who's a senior 747 captain for a major US carrier. Cellphone emmisions can interfere with VOR navigation systems, and more importantly, with ILS (Instrument Landing System) radios. So that knucklehead next to you who can't wait 5 minutes and starts making calls on final approach could be causing chaos in the cockpit. The chance of a cellphone interfering with a navigation system is small. But do you feel comfortable if it's interference in one case out of 100,000 causes a crash? No? Neither does the FAA.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
So why hasn't Al Qaeda gotten several terrorists to board a plane and then all turn on their cell phones while it takes off?
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
A good friend of mine is an airline pilot and he keeps his phone switched on in the cockpit. The only concern for him is the radio is situated near the center of the aircraft under a wing, so it is possible to get interference from a mobile phone over the radio if someoen is sitting close to it with the phone on.
In an unrelated, but interesting side note, they turn the internal lights off when landing or taking off so that in case of emergency, your eyes are already accustomed to the dark in order to speed up the escape out of the aircraft.
http://www.frenchgeek.com/
Nice link. This is the article that really should have been posted (I know, this IS slashdot). Has some real detail and makes the topic a bit scarier still.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
at http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/3069.
Funny, I was under the imrpession all these instruments were meant to be connected together with shock hardened busses, lots of shielding, etc? Yet despite all this, they're sensitive to a few microwaves.
Yet cars, which have far less equipment protection, and are chock full of processor driven subsystems these days, all of which could be in moderately close exposure to anywhere from 1 to 5 phones, have no problems what so ever.
It's a good thing no one's firing beams of high energy RF radiation all over the show, otherwise we might really be in trouble.
I call BS.
Another pilot here... In addition to the glideslope and localizer displays going erratic, the whisky compass also swings about 90 degrees and the GNS-430 loses RAIM.
I see nothing in this article about actually observing flight instrument malfunctions on the craft. Only RF measuring equipment was brought on board. We already know that some FCC Class B electronic devices emit more RF than they should-- these kinds of tests can be and have been performed on the ground. But do leaky devices cause problems with the instruments? The article only alludes to some sort of issue involving GPS. Being as people use GPS successfully in their cars with DVD players, radios, cell phones, and GBAs cranking away, this article is suspect. Just putting the measuring equipment in flight tells us nothing new.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Wait, so GPS is now a Critical navigation aid? When did this happen? As far as I knew, the FAA required that pilots use an array of several navigational tools, such that the loss of any single one would not have an adverse effect. Besides, GPS doesn't do a very good job of indicating altitude. That's why it's not (or was not) allowed for autopilot use.
I guess it's time to find some other means of transport, because I know most idiots out there don't bother to turn off their phones on airplanes.
They're taking their dog to get its two shots before it's too late. You're taking your dog there too, right?
Any IFR certified GPS receiver *must* include a feature called RAIM - Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring. The point of RAIM is that the receiver can detect when it is giving erroneous navigational information. At that point the receiver 'RAIM flags' rather than giving the crew misleading information. The crew can then ask for radar vectors (in the highly unlikely event that GPS is their sole navigation system) from ATC because they know it's wrong.
Cell phones DO interfere with aircraft radios though, and I have first hand experience. We were about to line up for an ILS approach into runway 08 at Ronaldsway. The pilot, a friend of mine, was making his first ever night IFR approach (it was raining, and cloud bases were about 800 feet, so it wasn't a really sticky IFR approach but it was still in the clouds and at night). I was monitoring his progress from the right seat. Sadly, he had forgotten to turn off his mobile phone.
His wife decided to phone him just as we were intercepting the localizer for 08. All audio on the aircraft was obliterated by this noise: 'bip b b bip b b bip b b bip b b bip b b bip brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' (if you have a GSM phone on European frequencies, it's likely you've heard this noise - cell phones interfere with almost *any* radio and audio equipment in Europe probably due to some harmonic off the frequency used) until he managed to shut the thing off. It was extremely distracting to say the least, and obliterated any chance of hearing any ATC instructions. It did *not* however intefere with the localiser or glideslope receiver which showed normal indications throughout. I took control while he found his phone to shut it off.
I doubt a cell phone will ever cause an accident due to disruption of navigational equipment (especially GPS) but it may do due to distraction at a critical phase of flight (especially if it occurs during a high workload situation, or perhaps when some unrelated emergency is occurring).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I find it continually ridiculous that they still allow people to do this -- just carry their kid on their lap for an entire flight. It's so 1955.
If you did that in a car, it would probably be child abuse; but it's okay because it's an airplane?
If seat belts are required at any point during the flight for adults, then seat belts and infant seats (NTSB-certified) should be required for infants at those same times.
(Actually my personal feeling is that infants should be kept somewhere down with the live animals in the baggage compartment, for the comfort of other passengers, but I don't think that's going to go over well. This is why I'm not a parent, either.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Ok, IANAAE/EE, but I have had some experience/education in the Air Traffic Management arena.
::shrug::
So some facts:
Typically, cell phones nowdays have a broadcast power of 300mW. Some older phones are more powerful, since they predated certain FCC regulations, I've been told.
They're going to be tens of meters away.
IIRC, transmitter power from the NAVSTAR satellites is <= 50W.
Satellites are 12,000 miles away.
I haven't done the math for relative signal strength, but the numbers are there, if you want to do it, for cell phones. I don't offhand know the frequencies operated on by GPS sats, so more advanced calculations will have to be offered by someone else. My prof for my personal navigation systems class back in college, who is probably the smartest man I know, assured us that standard GPS is, in fact, fairly easy to obscure. So take that for what you will.
I couldn't really tell you about the intereference produced by the circuitry of a laptop (or other devices), but laptops nowdays also use WiFi, which I can only imagine that most people don't turn off, and cause have some pretty nice interference, too.
And NAVSTAR GPS originally had errors artificially introduced into it, since it was a military system.
Even with this turned off, it's not as accurate as the FAA would like (I think it's somwhere around 5-20 meters of accuracy for most receivers?), so several systems are being used/developed to increase accuracy, including: uber expensive receivers, WAAS/LAAS (wide/local area augmentation system, which uses sats and ground based stations to increase accuracy), etc.
Oh, and while I love West Wing, the Lockheed Tristar L-1011s ended production sometime in the mid 80s, I believe.
As for engineering around it, I imagine a Faraday cage could help, but it would also mean cell phones and other radio type devices wouldn't work at all inside the cabin.
At my last employer, we had corporate jets outfitted with all the latest avionics and our pilots would let us use our mobile phones while flying (in instrument conditions). They even used theirs while in the cockpit and we never had any problems.
Too bad the commercial aviation fleet is so fragile.
I seriously do not see how a cellphone's weak radiation is going to affect a GPS device. Keep in mind that a GPS receiver is just a device that receives timestamps from many different sources at once and then triangulates a position based on the time differences between all the sources it is monitoring. So you are saying that a cellphone is delaying these signals more than just the distance between the receiver and the source alone? I seriously do not buy this at all. If this were the case, then you would never be allowed to use portable electronics during the duration of the flight, let alone takeoff and landing -- and its always portable... what about those CRT TVs they have on big planes?! I KNOW THOSE EMIT RADIATION!!! I am a firm believer in the fact that the real reason you cannot use portable electronics during TAKEOFF and LANDING is that the crew wants you to be able to hear them in case of emergency. Think about it.
Here's the article:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069
(Sorry about ruining everybody's speculation with facts....)
GSM operates on a different frequency in the US and Europe - in my experience, *much* more inteference happens on the European frequencies than the US frequencies.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
What does this tell us about the quality of airplane comm systems? It tells us they suck. If I can't play my GBA without crashing the plane, something is wrong with the plane, not the GBA or cellphone. Why can't we make communications equipment that can handle this type of interference? Does it exist for the military? Probably.
If that were true, UA Flight 93 wouldn't have made it all the way to Pennsylvania.
So all you'd need to do to royally screw an airline flight would be to modify a cell phone to pump out signal at a much higher power, then? Considering that, how long before electronic devices are banned from carry-on?
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Yes, if we want to be safe, cell phones can't be allowed in airports at all.
Of course, I don't believe that we would ever ban cell phones from being in an airport, but I do find it odd that our definition of what can and can not be behind the security checkpoint (and therefore on the airplane) is not as simple as "Does this item present a risk to the flight or the passengers?"
The problem is somewhat similar to the security vs. functionality and usability argument that we like to hash out here regarding software and operating systems.
where people allegedly called friends and family all over the plane while it made its fatal journey to the Pentagon. I'm sure the brands of mobile phones and their technologies (CDMA/GSM/AMPS) spread the gamut. In that case none of the cell phone stopped the pilot from guiding the plane where he wanted it to go. Some accounts said some passengers used the onboard flight phones but others clearly said personal cell phones were used.
I think the recent stories of pilots getting drunk before boarding their chariots should receive more focus than cell phones that don't do anything to the plane.
My cell phone scrolls down my browser. If my phone searches for my bluetooth headset and it's anywhere near my computer, and firefox is currently focused and I'm at the top of a page that can scroll, the phone will force the browser to scroll to the bottom of the page. Very easily explained since I have a bluetooth mouse, but the first time it happened, it really freaked me out. I'm pretty sure that if something similar were to happen on a plane, it would be very easily explained. I just don't want anyone to ever explain why a plane I was on suddenly scrolled to the bottom of the page.
AirPhone paid for this study?
The article says that a study was conducted that showed cell-phones were being used while planes were in flight. The article did not say that the study found any instance where the cell-phone use caused inteference with cockpit instruments.
As a pilot myself, I can say with complete confidence that you have no idea what you're talking about.
First of all, I'd like to point out that the use of all electronic devices (with a few odd exeptions like electric razors) is up to the pilot's discretion, which in most cases means up to the airline. Cellphone use anywhere but on the ground is prohibited by the FCC, not FAA, because of fear of overloading the cell towers. Interference with cockpit instruments doesn't even fit into the restriction.
Now the FCC isn't as worried about protecting cell towers, partly, at least, because technology has improved dramatically and there isn't as much to worry about. However, the ultimate decision of whether to allow cell phones still rests on the pilot (airline).
I can say that using a cell phone in my plane (on the ground, honest!) has never noticably affected my GPS system. However, I know of at least one instance where using a PDA has interfered with the lightning strike finder system--it's an ultra-sensitive receiver that picks up the signal created by lightning strikes--every time the user tapped on his PDA screen, a new lightning strike showed up 10 miles to the south-west.
Of course, the information presented by the instruments can be ignored; but then what's the point to having them? A strikefinder isn't very useful if you can't trust what it tells you.
The general comprimise that the airlines agree to is that they're willing to put up with a few false readings in the name of passenger comfort when the plane is above 10,000 ft. But below that level, all focus is on safety; the pilots quit talking about anything unrelated to the task at hand (the "sterile cockpit" rule), the stewardesses quit serving drinks, and the passengers quit screwing up the instruments with their little electronic toys.
So can cell phones screw up GPS readings? Probably. You're not going to see the difference in your hand-held GPS device, because consumer GPS (unlike the aviation counterparts) blithely ignore anomolies and just give you their "best guess" on your position. Avaition GPS receivers can't afford to be that cavalier.
Now that GPS is starting to be approved for approaches, the stakes are a lot higher. If the plane is on a GPS approach in a snowstorm down to Cat-3 minimums (e.g. O'Hare in zero visibility), and you decide to call your mom to tell her how scared you are, your phone call might interfere with the GPS receiver's readings. Best case scenario, the receiver's internal monitoring (see RAIM) will catch the anomoly and alert the pilot, who will terminate the approach and go land somewhere else. Worst case scenario? The error means that the calculated position is of by 20 feet at some critical moment and everyone gets dead.
So do the airlines take this sort of thing seriously? You bet they do. They're going to want the results of every study ever conducted on the matter. You'll probably see cell phones made legal in planes, but you'll never be allowed to use them below 10,000 ft, which means that you'll never be allowed to use them with ground receivers. Instead, cell phones might be usable through some in-plane cell receiver.
As for your absurd statement about shielding the cockpit--RF signals don't interfere with electronics by invading the instruments themselves; the signals sent by your phone are picked up by the instrument's antenna, which can create false readings, garble real readings, or both, all depending on the type of instrument in question. You obviously can't sheild the antenna, and you can't practically sheild the passenger cabin. So please turn of you cell phone.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
1. Why force 1000's of people each day to switch off their phones, when they can simply shield their equipment easily ??. It wont cost them anything.
;) )
2. If a mere cellphone can bring down an airplane, why terrorists are still using bombs or guns??
3. What if someone packs a few cellphones in their bags which go in the plane's luggage part?? How are they ensuring that no ringing cellphones are there ?
4. When they don't allow practically harmless things like nail-clippers or shaving blades or batteries, why they allow something which can destroy a plane full of passengers on just pressing a button???
5. Why use a missile to hit a plane when you can simply point a high gain GSM antenna to do the same ? (Hint to terrorists
6. How they survive other (and stronger) interference, like thunders and emf noise from engines itself??
7. How about building a seperate sealed cubicle (sound proof too) for those who need to call every 5 min?
8. Why don't educated people tell these retards to shut up and do some other useful research?
God created man in his own image, but somehow he evolved into a hairless monkey.
Having been an aerospace software engineer for almost 10 years now I can say I have my doubts about cellphones affecting aircraft equipment in a manner that would _significantly_ degrade an aircrafts ability to perform in a safe manner. In order for any equipment to be approved by the FAA many environmental tests have to be performed, including EMI vulnerability (the amount of EMI subjected to the equipment would probably kill a person if they were in the chamber with the equipment). Not to mention that almost all commercial airlines now deploy fancy Flight Management Systems which use multiple sensors for position fixing and have dual redundant (At least) safe guards and the ability to measure errors in the navigation solution and remove them. I'd worry more about whether the pilot was tipping back a few at the pub before flying than whether some yahoo on a cell phone is going to crash the plane... Maybe we should ask the MythBusters?
The rules are bullshit. Always have been. After 15 years, somebody is finally getting around to actually trying to figure out if there's any actual interference?
And the article is bullshit. They produce not a shred of evidence or any facts, or measurements. They merely state that they "found" cell phones could cause interference. So why don't they prove it, or at least describe the interference and its effects?
And this continuing whining about not wanting to hear other people talking on their cellphones is bullshit. Some people like to talk. Get over it. If they're not talking on their phone, they might talk to you. Either way, deal with it. It's not like an airplane is ever quiet, anyway.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
Presumably, the sensors for these systems are outside the skin of the plane, or else they wouldn't be able to get a signal anyway. I know the danger of making assumptions, but...
If an em signal from a cellphone (typ. less than 500 mW these days) can propagate down a wire in the body of the plane and into a system where it will cause trouble, then the system is insufficiently designed. Of course, we already know the system is insufficiently designed if cellphone signals inside the plane can cause issues with it...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The economics of air travel is that they need as close to 100% occupancy as possible. If they demarc a section for cell phone users you'll have (a) under-utilization of the dedicated section and (b) people who will use their cell phone in the cabin anyway.
What they ought to do is like they did in the Old West (allegedly): before you get on a plane, you have to surrender your cell phone to the flight attendant. You get a claim ticket, and you get it back at the end of your flight. That, or Get Smart's Cone of Silence.
Unfortunately trains aren't much of an option out here, I'm in rural New Mexico.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Since we seem to be overrun with "important people", idiots, and "experts" who are sure that their device will not cause serious interference to aircraft systems. I suggest that the sky marshals be authorized to shoot anyone who ignores the instructions of the flight crew. That might make people think twice before engaging in behavior that endangers their fellow passengers. It would also provide a source of entertainment for the kiddies. How long can Mr. MBA yak on his cell phone before he gets capped by a sky marshal? Alternatively, we could just ask them to leave the sircraft, immediately.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
More likely than some cell phone jamming the GPS, irate passengers will attempt to stuff a loudly yakking jerkwad through a window, thus decomressing the aircraft and causing mass casualties.
Seriously, so many of the forseeable modes of failure have been engineered around, future aircraft crashes will always be either "unusual" (Well, we never expected toilet fumes to overcome the crew!") or just man-made terrorism.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
How can cellphones, who operate in the 800-860 and 1900 to 1990 MHz bands interefere with GPS, who operatins at 1227.6 MHz and 1575.42 MHz? GPS receivers have pretty filters in place to protect against near-band interferrence, but even an old analog cellphone using 800 Mhz AMPS at 33 dbm will have no affect on the aircrafts' GPS receivers....
Heads should roll at the FCC because they are not doing their job.
Measuring the EM emissions of a device is very easy, and done anyway to certify devices. There is no black magic here. We know how radio transmissions work, we know who is transmitting/receiving on what frequencies, the spectrum is divided up, etc.
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
GPS isn't, and never has been, a critical cockpit instrument. It can't be - the US military reserve the right to turn it off without warning. That's one of the really good reasons for Galileo.
You're so one of those people that leaves their iPod on during sex aren't you?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
I'm hoping it gives cabin crew the right to pepper spray and forcibly restrain them, but then I'm just being hopeful.
That's a great idea! Then we'll just wait till the pepper spray gets re-circulated in the ventilation system so we can all share in the fun!
Live forever, or die trying.
I know for a fact that my blackberry causes interference with both the communications and navigation radios in my plane. If I don't turn it off before I get in the air, every time in hunts for a signal noise can be heard over the com radios, and I'm sure the nav side of the stack is affected too. Crackles on a com radio are just an annoyance, but shooting an instrument approach with the nav radios compromised couldn't be a worse idea.
Only with unshielded (read crappy) speakers.
What's the point of using a cell phone if you're umpteen thousand miles in the air ? You won't get any signal so shut the damned thing off already. On the other side, it seems rather foolish that an airplane would be scuttled by a ridiculously common consumer gadget. Reminds me of that super expensive bike lock that could be trivially opened with the butt end of a cheap Bic pen.
:P
I mean, couldn't they put a tiny layer of shielding around these sensitive devices ? Is it really going to break their bank ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Maybe they could use a little nanotube paint. :)
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
I suspect there are some palces where a precision GPS approach has replaced no instrument approach at all. List of precision GPS approaches:
. pdf
t hmeeting/Brownfield.ppt
l
http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/air_traffic/waas-lpv
All the precision GPS approaches on that list in Alaska are at Anchorage though. I actually found a link to GPS re Alaska Airlines (ick ppt but you can view it in html on Google):
www.navcen.uscg.gov/cgsic/meetings/summaryrpts/37
linked from
http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/air_traffic/waas.htm
There are probbaly a number of places where they can get in now that they have a non-precision GPS approach, where no approach existed before.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Thousands of general aviation pilots use cell phones, ipods, and other devices in the cockpit everyday within arms length of the panel.
As long as anyone can remember, theyve ALWAYS been telling us to turn off our cellular devices during take-off and landing. Why is that? Perhaps they KNEW that they caused interference? Plus, how often can you actually make a cellular call while in the plane? Very rarely.
More than likely cell phones and electrical devices are already interfering with GPS in planes, but guess what...they dont need it. I go to an aeronautical school full of pilots, and I can tell you that every single one of them trains WITHOUT GPS, and has to learn how to chart on paper as well.
So let me summarize : The cell phone interference (caused from idle cell phones on the plane?) would have to be more than 75% cancelling the GPS signal for an extended period of time, the pilots would all have to have forgotten how to use a compass, Air Traffic Controllers will have to stop watching the planes, and radio would have to fail. Id say at that point, GPS is the last of your worries.
To say that this interference will cause an accident is without merit whatsoever.
Yea that did occur to me .04 of a nanosecond after hitting post .......... there's always a tazer... or three.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
I have noticed that my CDMA cell phone battery dies faster if phone is not switched off during flights...Has anyone else observed similar thing with GSM phones?..
GPS receivers (at 1575 MHz and 1227 MHz) are typically not affected by emissions from cellular equipment (which operates at 800, 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz for most of the European and North american systems) unless you happened to drop your phone directly on top of the GPS antenna.
Less is more.
Just paint the inside of the cabin, especially the wall between the cockpit and the passenger area, with that signal blocking, nano-tube paint. That will solve the problem.
About half the Seinfeld episodes would have never happened if cell phones were around.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Reminds me of a scene in Soul Plane. The scene is in the trailer here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/mgm/soul_plane/
Dude, that explains last night. I pulled up to a four way stop and this lightning pulled up and just kinda slowed down a little then blasted right through the intersection without stopping and I was like, "Damn you, lightning!" but I guess it had the right of way.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Another worthless conclusion drawn from a set of interesting data. According to the study cited by the article, an average flight has 1-4 people who are making cell phone calls in violation of FAA policy. According to the article, this could interfere with avionics. Nobody has shown that it does interfere, they just repeat the obvious (and vacuous) fact that it could. In the face of the shown-by-this-study fact that virtually every flight has at least one cell phone user on board, that's strong evidence against any actual interference. If it were happening, we should see it all the time.
From reading some of the postings here it sounds reasonable that GPS is just one of a number of navigation instruments available to the flight crew and that they cross reference multiple instruments. As long as cell phones don't cause all available navigation instruments to fail I don't know how much there is to worry about. I'd be more worried if alot of people using their cell phones on a flight can cause uncommanded movement of flight controls on airliners that use a fly-by-wire system. With that I've read about the possibility of using a cell phone inflight by the intruction of a pico cell network on ane airplane. The distance between the cell and phone is very short and so the cell phone would only need to use a low power signal to allow a person to make calls from within the airplane.
5 -05/07-15-05memo.html
http://www.house.gov/transportation/aviation/07-1
Everyone has known this for years, and that's because everyone who travels on planes is told by the cabin crew that cell phones must be turned off during flight, take-off and landing. Why do we need a study to prove this to us? It's god damn obvious when the airline tells us it for our own safety!
On planes you are asked to turn off your phones because it may keep you alive by not interfering with flight instrumentation... In theaters your phones are forcibly rendered useless so not even emergency calls are received by paint that blocks cell-phone signals so that you can hear the babies crying and children talking in the theater... What's wrong with this picture?
However, the CMU study concluded otherwise. While the researchers looked primarily at cell phone use, they also discovered that emissions from other portable devices proved "problematic."
They don't seem to elaborate on the topic. Can anyone explain to me how a device that gives off almost no EM emission could be "problematic"?
OK, I have a reason for asking - I never understood why I was once asked by a flight attendant to turn off my camera during the flight (and you can't really get much more passive than a digital camera). :P
They are failing in their logic! If mobile phones interfer with cockpit instraments? How come they worked sooo well on 11 Sept 2001?!!!!!! Lies! Lies! Lies! Stop it! It's over! FIrst of all at high altitude, you cannot even get a mobile signal morons! Next a low atitude, when you can receive a signal, an aircraft will immediately be notified it is off course by ATC. Either radar on the ground, on the transponder will tell ATC if a plane is off course! Now please! Stop this fool's quest!
If a lowly cell phone can actually cause a crash this way, I have to wonder how much damage a device engineered to actually do as much damage of this kind as possible would do?
And then wonder why no terrorist has tried to down a plane this way. Either as a passenger, or from the ground.
It seems that it would be an obvious design goal for an airplane that it should be able to hande interference of this kind.
NEWS FLASH
Today at an undisclosed airport security checkpoint the TSA stopped a suspected terrorist in poison of consumer electronics. A TSA source speaking on condition of anonymity stated that the TSA has detained an individual found to be wearing a vest containing an unknown quantity of consumer electronic device. The suspect is being transported to Guantanamo Bay for repeated daily body cavity searches and genital electro stimulation. The suspect was found to be in passion of an oversized carryon bag containing several devices including a WiFi and wireless broadband enabled laptop, a PDA, an iPod, a satellite radio, flash drives, a digital camera and possibly other devices Which may even included a blackberry with a Bluetooth headset. The source also stated that due to the availability variety and complete ease anyone can acquire consumer electronics everyone poses a serious threat to GPS. On a related note congress is considering a waiting period and requiring RF-ID tracking chips to be installed in all consumer electronic devices and over sized luggage. The additional fees resulting from this legislation are not expected to exceed $100 per passenger flight segment. The fees will be divided between special interest groups congress and the airlines senior management.
On your non GPS precision landings. But that's not really the point. The GPS assisted landings allow the airline to land under conditions that were prohibited before. I rather appreciate that since the penalty for not landing where you were planning on landing is going to another airport 2000 miles away (typically Anchorage or back to Seattle) and spending the night, then rinse, lather, repeat.
Peanuts and coffee get rather tiring rather quickly.
Under these conditions, which are quite common in the winter, it has allowed Alaska airlines to reduce thier horrid on time statistics to just mearly bad....
I, for one, would much rather have people just stifle themselves for a few hours rather than me either spending the night in some annoying airport or spending the rest of eternity splattered against a mountainside.
But feel free to get splattered on your non GPS approach. I'm on our local search and rescue team, it would give us an excuse to get a free helicopter ride. (Actually, the GPS precision approaches are not available for non commerical users, AFAIK. A local air ambulance company is the first non-Alaska Air group to be allowed to use the system).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It's a good job that they turn off all the cell phone towers that aircraft may be flying over if cell phone operating frequencies can bring down an aircraft!
I never knew that so many cell phone manufacturers ignored FCC regulations and made cell phones that broadcast multi-megawatt nuclear death rays.
If a cell phone really can bring down or interfer with a cockpit instruments that perform unrelated functions on unrelated frequencies - then it's broken. Otherwise, add cell phones to our great big list of Weapons Of Mass Potential Destruction But For Now You Must Fear Them! Meet the new axis of Evil: Verizon, Cingular, Sprint (hey, they're already pretty evil)!
In other words: The article is retarded. Brutally retarded. It even admits that there is zero actual evidence of it ever happening, and then fearmongers by speculating that it "might" happen by some other device that's brought aboard.
A sane conclusion would have been to be wary of devices that fail to comply with FCC regulations. By broadcasting on GPS frequencies, for example.
It is my understanding that almost every cell tower has a GPS receiver. You can see the little hat-like antenna on the top of the equipment building at the bottom of the towers. They use the GPS to provide accurate time to the phones in the cells.
How did the people on the hijacked planes call their loved ones on the cell phone?
Answer: They didn't. Learn the real facts.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
If mobile phones interferred with aircraft GPS receivers, how come the one in my car or on boats work perfectly fine? The ones on some boats and ships are exactly like the ones on aircraft!
If airplane cockpit instruments can be disrupted by the small output wattage of typical cell phone(s) (even when "confined" in the fuselage of a plane), then they are a serious accident waiting to happen.
I'd be surprised that such unreliable equipment is allowed on a vehicle which can be expected to be hit by lightning on a regular basis during a normal operational lifetime.
If the airlines were actually serious about the safety of their equipment, then they'd damn well better buy equipment which is resistant to such effects. If they don't, then sooner or later some malicious bastard is going to HERF/EMP a plane and that'll be all-she-wrote.
The one thing I haven't figured out how to do (and wish I could find a way) would be to switch up the quick menu from the main screen. Other than that, though, the RAZR is perfect. And all the girls tell me it's so tiny. I finally like it when they say that!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I care as well.
They are testing this as we speak. So maybe they can confirm/dispel this one.
you're going to see a pilot saying "Now that these fly on autopilot, me and my co spend time playing games on our wireless".
Problem with cell phone on planes is that it lights up so many towers that you can't lock it for billing purposes....or allegedly lights up all the towers over a city.
Needless to say if this were REALLY true cellphones would be confiscated at the gate and we DAMN sure would have seen more crashes.
It's more likely that the FCC took some direction from the seat back phone providers (GTE) "Oh yeah, they need to use our 27.00 per minute safe phones". Complete and total BS.
Three days ago I was flying a Cessna with my flight instructor. The flight was going well when suddently over my headset was the most annoying (and very loud) squeal. I thought this was a sign that either my radios, the entire electrical system, or alternator was in the process of dying. My instructor doesn't say anything and then pulls out his cell phone and starts talking. It was 30 seconds of pure auditory hell.
:)
During that first blast, I didn't look at my navs to see if they were affected but on subsequent calls I did. I always turn my cell phone off so I never get to test it. So, here was my chance.
I tuned both VORs and watched their needles - both were fine when the calls came in. GPS was ok too. When I was close enough to tune in the ILS, he didn't get any more calls but did get an SMS which didn't alter the ILS readings at all. Over the headset, the text message didn't sound nearly as loud as his regular calls.
This wasn't really much of a test, though. Air is bumpy and needles move around a lot anyway. There's no chance of seeing it mess with my compass. I just wanted to see from an "average situation" point of view. Any future passengers will be asked to turn off their cell phones just so I don't have to listen to that squeal over my headset. If I do hear it, maybe somebody will experience a little sudden turbulance.
On a side note, this was in a Cessna 172 which has an completely different shape than commercial planes. The fact that they are tubular could present a whole new series of issues with resonance.
I don't think the airlines really think they're much of a problem. If they actually thought they were a threat, they would either have the instruments shielded or have detectors in the plane. Imagine the situation where everybody on the plane has a cell phone and turns them all on at the same time. Sure, statistically it wouldn't happen but certain "organizations" could cheaply fill a plane and give everybody a few cell phones. Or even maybe not the entire plane, but 20% of it. At what point could they become dangerous?
What if said organization knew of a flight into a certain airport that has an obstacle within a few degrees of the glide slope? Could activating a large number of cell phones at a certain point during decent deflect the glide slope readings enough to where the pilot adjusts and inadvertantly decends into the obstacle? What about deflecting it the other way? Could you cause the pilot to land long and travel off the end of the runnway?
So either they've tested and determined they're not a real threat or they haven't tested anything and are just waiting for something to happen and public pressure requires them to test.
Sorry for the rambling.. I needed a break from coding.
Or is some of this article just plain dumb? "will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers." If something interfers with the GPS receiver, it shouldn't be a big deal. When training for my pilots license, and a short time after, I didn't even have GPS and still got to my destination safely. If an airplane looses control because a GPS signal was lost, then it's the pilots' fault. They were just plain dumb and shouldn't have been flying anyway. Besides, there are several backups to the GPS including actually reading a chart (yes, I mean reading an actual piece of paper, getting on one of the two (or more) radios and talking to a controller, backup anaglog instruments, etc. If it interfers with the autopilot.. turn it off and actually FLY the plane! Even the fly by wire system has a hydrolic backup. If you get lost (probably the most that can happen) because all of the above fails, then go to the back of the plane, grab one of the offending laptops, and log on to one of the many flight tracking sites to check where you are.
No, your eyes are the primary navigation signal for the last few thousand feet. In a Category 1 ILS (the vast majority of ILS installations and approaches), you get 200' MDA, which at 3 degree glidepath is 3800 feet from the touchdown point (well, technically the aim point, but let's not get into minutia about flares and such).
If you mean that the ILS gets you the last few thousand feet of altitude, the FAA is building WAAS approaches to Category 1 ILS minimums, in which case it has/will be used as primary until you're 200 feet off the surface. There are plenty of towers over 200' AGL near approach paths in large cities...
This study shows that the FAA needs to start enforcing 14 CFR 91.21.
Who cares about the reality of the danger. For the love of God people, keep this myth alive! In fact take it to new levels... How about "Cell phones can cause planes to crash INTO you at movie theaters, restaurants, etc..."
"...cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers"
Good thing no major superpower is reserving the right to jam or destroy Galileo satellites then, if airliners are so sensitive to GPS interference...
http://spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069
Phones use different modulation schemes. Spread spectrum like CDMA is hard to even detect, much less cause interferance. GSM is time division multiplex, and a narrow band carrier is switched on and off. That switching can cause some devices to respond, usually badly.
Maybe the 'Nanotube Paint Blocks Cell Phones on Demand' story has the answer. Either coat the entire inside of the passenger area with this stuff or coat all of the aircraft instrumentation racks and cable trays.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
How is detecting emissions with a laptop in a bag detecting interference with the plane? I see no data presented in this article; I call shinanigans.
If ever I'm faced with getting on a plane which has a pilot who considers GPS a vital instrument I'll either leave or take a parachute.
GPS is an AID to navigation that is all, nothing more and nothing less.
Now if it was the radar altimeter, ILS, the engine management system etc that would be critical issue...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
I don't know much about airplane phones, but I would assume they work on the same principle as a cell phone, being as there are no phone lines running from the plane to the ground. I just think that the people who make their money off the credit cards used to make mile-high phone calls, are just freakin out cause people are smartening up and realizing it's a bunch of crap that it intereferes with the instruments.
=*^.^*=
Although I find it hard to believe that portable electronics have any effect on cockpit electronics, let's assume they do. The correct course of action is not to remove/disable portable devices from flight, they need to build better shielding for the cockpit and the plane in general. Based on the study, terrorists would bring on board modified cell phones that emit strong signals. They would be allowed to carry these on board since they have them turned off. Now they turn it on during flight. This is similar to telling hackers not to connect to your machine and trusting them rather than putting up a firewall.
Why can't people just stay off the phones anymore? There is a story on Slashdot just a few back that talks about nanotube paint so people can flick a switch and deprive the lemmings of their phones. It's like...just hang the fucking thing up sometimes and we won't have to worry about it. Personally there are not enough people I know that I would want bothering me...AND bothering me ENOUGH to warrant carrying a phone around all the time. Especially if it bothers others too (Commercial Pilots, people watching a movie, etc. etc.)
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
This code is put into a multi-redundant computer system that controls the fly-by-wire system. There are typically at least three computers in this system wired to the controls. These real-time systems take all the inputs they have gathered (including feedback sensor readings, such as from position sensors and such), and cast a "vote". If all three vote the same way, then that is determined to be the "true" inputs, perform the output for those inputs. If two or more vote the same way, then same thing, plus a bit of logging (and probably some statistical gathering of data regarding the one computer that dissented - to see how often it dissents from "popular" opinion). If they all disagree, then I would imagine another vote is taken, and seen how it agrees with the prior vote, etc - there are probably warning lights and such given to the pilot, etc - in case there is a real problem.
I am sure the system is even more complex than this, but you get the gist of it. It isn't a single computer, it isn't just an electronic disconnect between the controls and the control surfaces. It is a very complex system designed with one purpose in mind - keeping the plane and you in the air in as safe a manner as humanly possible. Most planes even prevent the pilot from accidentally or on-purpose doing things that the craft would consider "out-of-design-spec", unless overridden in some not-so-obvious manner (probably in a manner that would require co-pilot participation). This system works, and it works extremely well. There have been rare occasions where the code actually caused issues, and I am certain that such a system does have failure modes which have been seen in the real-world, but it is one system where we get multiple 9's of fault-tolerancy. But this level costs the aircraft manufacturing companies big bucks for software development.
Now, what scares me is the automobile manufacturers - things like GM's HyWire concept vehicle. Interesting idea, nice execution, but I wouldn't drive it unless they took it to the same level of redundancy and checking as the aircraft manufacturer's have. Not that I expect it - after all, if Ford couldn't be bothered to fix the exploding gas tank issue on the Pinto (not to mention the Crown Vic Interceptor - what is it with Ford and Saddle fuel tanks?) for want of a part that would have cost 10 cents, you think they (or other manufacturers of vehicles) are going to do the same vetting process that aircraft manufacturers do for their future drive-by-wire vehicle systems? Not likely...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Anybody know why the phone does this?
and the article's hype is overblown.
I used to work in the airline industry, doing runway analysis for cargo jets. They factored in everything; and there's no way pilots going to crash because of unregulated cell phone calls in the cockpit. None.
The regulations for what kind of radio-interference you're allowed in a cockpit are very, very strict. One company I know of spent over two years certifying that for a given brand of laptop, for a given plane, with a given configuration of engine, electronics, etc. would NEVER sufficient interference to cause problems with the operations of the plane, even in an emergency situation.
Cell phones are mostly pointless for commerical jets; pilots already have their radios; they're certified, they have their certified backup systems, they have their redundant failovers. If the pilot loses all communication with the control tower, there's already a huge engineering problem; that's not supposed to happen unless several systems fail at the same time.
There's more levels of checking and cross-checking involving *ANYTHING* on an airplane than just about any other device I can think of. If you put a device on the plane (lights, de-icers, air-conditioning), and it draws power, you have to certify that it won't interfere with the operation of the plane, even in an emergency situation.
If you're operating any device, you have to factor in it's impact on the plane, and often you may have to reduce the cargo carried, as a safety measure, due to the energy costs of running the de-icer/air-conditioner/etc. It's very involved, and the details are strict; so much so that many airlines always run with the worst case scenarios just so that they don't have to worry about the details. There are safety margins on top of safety margins on top of safety margins; and together they ensure that planes don't crash.
If the article was about computers, I'd label it FUD. As it is, it's just... hype!
they would let the passengers operate any electronic device on an airliner. In fact I would discourage them from even concentrating their thoughts on the same object at the same time. Brains generate RF, too, you know. And having 400-600 of them in sync could wreak havoc on these new "fly by wire" planes.
What?
GPS is critical and planes will crash without it, huh? I hadn't realized computers and satellites came before flight. I guess the new tech tree in Civ 4, where you can discovery rockets before flight, is correct after all.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Of course, it raises the age-old question of, if the navigation is so sensitve to accidental interference, what happens when someone deliberately transmits an NDB signal from near the runway?
Then the instrument students learning NDB approaches will each call up approach and say "Approach, the NDB is acting up again, we're going missed; can we get vectors to the ILS?" They probably won't hit anything, because (1) you'd be stupid to descend in NDB guidance when your ident is jammed, and (2) the TERPS would probably give you obstacle clearance even if you're significantly off. At OAK it was common for the people shooting the NDB to be a half mile off course on two-to-three mile final, due to the way the water twists the NDB signal.
At those heights, I imagine you'd want to ban all electronic equipment within a few miles of the airport, since cellphones on the ground will likely have as good a transmission path to the GPS antenna as those in the cabin?
If you're familiar with the near-far problem, you'd realize that a portable electronic device five feet away from an antenna poses a greater risk than one a few miles away. And if you think we're not paranoid about autoland, look at all those ILS critical regions and Cat 2/3 critical regions on airports. They don't want the metal body of aircraft to get anywhere near a nav signal that's used for autoland. GPS antenna is also likely atop the aircraft pointing up with the fuselage serving as a groundplane shield, so it makes it more likely that stuff in the plane can interfere before higher-power stuff on the ground.
As you move away from a tower, the transmitter will automatically raise the output power towards max. Where you might only be transmitting less than 50mW to reach a tower a short distance away, you could be upwards of 500mW or more depending upon the phone and band at altitude, so the possibility of RFI is quite possible.
However, on the other hand, the aircraft avionics should reject these signals at the front end. We're not talking about a 5 buck FM radio, but mission critial instruments that go through RFI/EMI emissions and suceptance tests. The instuments and comms gear are put into a anechoic chamber and bombarded with RF at broad frequencies to check for failures. In fact military aircraft are hit with enough RF to require excluding any personnel near the testing area due to the RF radiation hazard.
I think the ultimate hazard is minimal. A overflight over a UHF television transmission tower (upwards of 2+ megawatts erp) is a greater hazard.
Thats Bullshit.
I give this whole thread 5 for uninformed.
So let me inform you.
Passenger airliner avionics equipment is contained in a avionics hold in racks and connected up with the cockpit, variety sensors and antennas via cable harnesses. This is as much as people usually understand of avionics. Where their understanding ends is the signalling and systems architecture.
Flight critical avionics equipment, mainly things like engine control, autopilot and navigation systems are the result of DECADES of R&D. A very foreign concept for today's tech generation. These units have been tested and proven to work with countless flight hours under much more demanding interference conditions than what consumer electronics can produce - in fact many civil avionics are used 'as is' by military aircraft.
But lets talk about interference first. You can talk about backdoor and front door. Backdoor is where you get your signal directly to the system circuit either board level or interconnecting wiring. And surprise surprise this indeed happens! Those racks of equipment actually interfere with each other all the time causing both intermittent problems impossible to track or more fundamental conflicts which sometimes can be solved with special engineering: extra filters, shielding, special positioning etc. This happens all the time and with every model of passenger aircraft our there. And guess what - number one cause of accidents: pilot error.
So how is this possible. Lets look at the innards of a typical autopilot. First of all, almost all signalling is differential or digital so interference doesn't have a fucking chance there. But lets give it a chance and see what the autopilot does when it receives interference. All data is tested and compared and bad data is ignored and flags up the pilot display if deemed necessary. If the interference is somehow able to simulate valid data with an improbability straight out of HHGTTG, the rate change test will catch it so it will have to be both valid, consistent with current flight profile and have a consistent and valid rate of change - a steep requirement since most interference is erratic and intermittent.
Ok, so lets settle for just plain DOS attack here. We can't fool the AP so lets make it's life impossible. What does the AP do then? It resets itself, releases it's hold on the servos and notifies the pilot to go manual. And even if you fry the whole AP with an EMP, the watchdog circuit and finally the purely mechanical/hydrodynamic backup system will instantly release the AP from the servos and notify the pilot to go manual.
So are AP's never at fault? Are they immortal? Of course not. There are design faults in software, careless avionics technicians that install bad wiring or fries the thing with static. In the end all AP's fail due to heat, vibration and aging of semiconductors. So why aren't these millions of aircraft that are flying on full AP dropping out of the sky like flies? That's why you have the pilot there. So the chance of a cellphone interfering with the AP to down an aircraft is pretty zero.
I'm not even gonna go into the navigation systems dating back to WW2 still being used to today NAV (VOR/ILS). Enough said that their circuits and architecture is at least as reliable as AP's.
So what we have left is front door interference - going through the sensor or antenna. I guess this is what most people would consider the biggest danger and sure it's easier to understand since every one has seen it's effect on their TV when the neighbour uses his power tools. However this does not change the scenario seen above. Good luck making a consumer device malfunction in a way that produces a valid and consistent GPS signal. Sure you can block the GPS, you can block any navigation signal, hell you can even take the power off the whole fucking plane. It's called a thunderstorm and you see them if you'd leave your computer and go outside. However thunderstorms rarely bring down aircraft. And when they do more often because they blow the e
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
GSM does this. In short, GSM sucks.
It is sending out location updates as required by the network. These are done at full power. Your phone will also do this just before it rings with an incoming call.
GSM phones do it. CDMA doesn't, CDMA is greatly superior on the over the air stuff, and this is just one instance in which it shows.
Too bad Verizon are controlling bastards, Sprint sucks and the phone selection on CDMA sucks. Cause I'd love to get away from GSM.
(I've had Cingular, Verizon and Sprint in the last 3 years, 1 year of each. I switched in the first week number portability was available and again a year later.)
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
And the best part ... they have quiet cars. Generally it's either the first or last car on the train, and the rules are you can't use a cellphone (for voice) and you can't talk above a whisper there.
....
Which reminds me of dutch trains that had that 20 years ago already. Of course the signs with "stilte coupe" were in Dutch. And foreigners couldn't always read that, especially this Scottisch guy that thought it would be a great spot to play a little bagpipe
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
Since the Fine Article is very lean on details, it's hard to properly criticise the findings. I guess it's not going to stop me anyhow... So I will say that I have personally never experienced any phone-GPS interference.
A few years ago I was working on a fleet management system, which had a device in the semitrailers to record their movements and send the logs by a GSM phone connections to the server. The entire device was a 1x2x5 inch box, with a GSM phone module, a GPS module, and common GPS/GSM external antenna. The shielding between the two modules was rather superficial. I think this (especially the common antenna) is pretty much a worst case scenario.
We've never observed reduced precision during phone communication. Airplanes will probably use more sensitive receivers, but that just means that they will likely be less easily confused than a cheap sirf II chip.
Nowadays I fulfill my navigation needs with a PocketPC phone and a bluetooth (sirf III) GPS. They typically reside within inches of each other when in use. I've never observed any transient GPS errors while making a call or while the phone was switching cell towers/providers or searching for a network.
Ah yes, and we all know what an expert on aircraft both Toby and the writers of west wing were.
And the answer to Toby's question was 'yes sir, without a doubt.'
Nowadays all laptops have some kind of wireless that most people don't know how to turn off, yet they are allowed in flight!
I may not be a pilot, but I'm a good physicist and a reasonable engineer.
As another poster said, relying on millions of travellers to do the right thing is not sane safety engineering. If you really believe it might only need one passenger to forget he has his phone on him to cause a crash under GPS landing, then I will never fly again.
For example, you can put high/low pass filters on the antenna to massively reduce the pickup of irrelevent frequencies and the industry should be doing. This is why we have radio band licencing and frequency separation!
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
One thing I'd love to know is this: do handheld GPS
receivers interfere with the ones in the plane?
I've been asked to turn off my Garmin receiver several
times already during landing, and it's tricky to argue
with a stewardess about why I think that such a small
receiver (!) shouldn't be a problem...
why not properly design the planes? If the electronics are that picky, perhaps we should shield the cockpit from outside interference, rather than try to kill off the sources of the interference.
Just a thought....
Sigs are nice guns
Present GPS transmission freq. is 1.5GHz +/- 200MHz.
The system is what is called Ultrawide Band. The likelyhood of it being interfered with all present telecom sysems, most of which are now at 1.8 to 1.9 GHz, is extremely (very) unlikely. All, what they call SMS systems (unlicensed spectrum) are in the 2.4 and
5.8 spectrum, and very low power.
The problem is that the new aircraft are moving or are all fly by wire. I hope they (Aircraft OEMs) are not thinking about going wireless. I have heard about fiber links and they can not be presently effected by any Radio transmission.
Here's the original link:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069