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I really can't remember the last time I've seen someone lugging a hard cover book around, that wasn't a religious extremist determined to 'save me'...

Just about every Bible I've seen uses one of those soft leather covers, and most witnesses I've seen usually carry tracts to hand out rather than lugging a full on Bible around with them.

Whoever's been bothering you, they must've been hardcore.
 
I remember watching a Mythbusters Ep where they tested mobile phones on avionics, i believe they concluded that there wasn't a problem, but it was more about the massive number of different phones around and testing for all was impossible so it was best to blanket ban all phones.

Is this true?

Mostly. I saw that episode and it had lots and lots and lots of issues. The first among them was very limited testing. EMI is an interesting thing in thing is that is is not a:

PASS
FAIL

type of test. Just because you have a single test that will pass, it does not mean it will always pass with all similar hardware. Likewise, it can be sensitive to specific version of both software and hardware installed in various sub-systems, altitude, communications timing and a host of other things. It can change from air-craft to air-craft even within the same exact make and model of plane with the same exact sub-systems. This means many many tests are required to get really good coverage and a high degree of confidence in the results. Myth-Busters did none of that.

Case in point was the C-17 HUD. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they did not. One might work in plane A but not so well in plane B of the same build reference. This is a direct result of EMI exaggerating a HW design flaw.
 
I'd prefer that cell phones remain banned during takeoff and landing. The clowns yammering away on their phones — in spite of the rules — are rude and annoying.


maybe ban voice talk but there's nothing wrong with using your device while takeoff. If the signal strength from the tower to the cockpit isn't strong enough to overtake some dinky cellphone signals I don't trust it in the first place anyways.

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I'd prefer that cell phones remain banned during takeoff and landing. The clowns yammering away on their phones — in spite of the rules — are rude and annoying.

And there's this thing called 'business' that those 'clowns' are usually conducting.
 
Mostly. I saw that episode and it had lots and lots and lots of issues. The first among them was very limited testing. EMI is an interesting thing in thing is that is is not a:

PASS
FAIL

type of test. Just because you have a single test that will pass, it does not mean it will always pass with all similar hardware. Likewise, it can be sensitive to specific version of both software and hardware installed in various sub-systems, altitude, communications timing and a host of other things. It can change from air-craft to air-craft even within the same exact make and model of plane with the same exact sub-systems. This means many many tests are required to get really good coverage and a high degree of confidence in the results. Myth-Busters did none of that.

Case in point was the C-17 HUD. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they did not. One might work in plane A but not so well in plane B of the same build reference. This is a direct result of EMI exaggerating a HW design flaw.

Interesting. I personally would,be happy to keep the law as it is, as im paranoid of flying! I've watched to many air crash investigation programmes! Even if it means I can't use my kindle on takeoff to take my mind off things!
 
You don't seem to understand engineering and design.

Neener neener.

Nothing is built to be perfectly safe. They are built to be safe enough. And planes are shielded, but it is impossible to have 100% shielding. And electromagnetic interference is a real thing. Its physics. The only thing that hasn't been proven conclusively is whether low power device can cause interference.

You don't seem to understand basic debating.

You're contradicting yourself. You said first that interference is real and then you say that it hasn't been proven conclusively that interference can be caused.

In any event, if the plane is inadequately shielded such that it cannot withstand the presence of FCC part 15 approved devices in the cabin, then it is not airworthy.

I believe that there is no study that shows it does, because it would require thousands, maybe even millions of instances to cause one instance of interference because the probability is so low. But guess what? We have millions of such devices in use. So the risk is real.

The risk is thousands if not millions of times lower than the risk of being clipped by a drunk driver on your way home from the airport.
 
The risk is thousands if not millions of times lower than the risk of being clipped by a drunk driver on your way home from the airport.

Typically air travel is much safer then by motor vehicle. But 30,000 feet and gravity is working against you if a failure happens.
 
As a pilot with a degree in electrical engineering, I shall sit back and enjoy the proclamations of "There's no way an electronic device could interfere with navigation systems onboard an aircraft" made by people who have no clue what they are talking about....

There's a big difference between can and will. Low power consumer electronics? Unlikely. Military-grade equipment (jammers, etc)? For sure. Could a terrorist do such a thing? We could postulate I suppose (though there's cheaper alternatives...).

Maybe I'm the only one... but I'd rather approach the problem from a different angle: why are our civilian avionics still liable to civilian electronic interference? It's almost embarrassing if a mere cellphone could in fact interfere with what should be highly shielded avionics -- I don't buy the "my cellphone crashed the plane" point of view.
 
which is the game in the picture in the first post ?
What other games we have for iPhone with similar game play ?
 
No interference

These devices don't interfere with flights- it's crap. Look at the evidence- not a single proven case, just 75 'suspected' incidents over many years. Guaranteed on every flight there are many of these devices such as phones left on. That's millions of flights a year, with millions of devices on, and only 10 'suspected' unproven incidences a year.
It only takes common sense on an evidential assessment to see that if these devices were interfering dangerously with aircraft, there would be much more evidence.
 
You are not allowed to bring on large quantities of liquids or gels because they can easily be flammable or explosive substances, disguised to look like juice or toothpaste. Those items can directly cause the loss of an airframe. Interfering with Navigation receivers or radios is not going to (easily) result in a loss of an aircraft

WRONG.
My bottle of water, deodorant, shampoo, nail clippers, etc. that the TSA will steal from me if I try to travel with them, has a statistical chance of causing damage to the airplane of ZERO.

The point is a radio in a cell or portable computer has an unknown level of danger, likely minimal to none, but greater than that of a bottle of water. The fact that a cellular radio could cause damage but shampoo cannot, but the shampoo is what is banned is what the poster is saying is ridiculous, and it is.

And the argument I think you are trying to make is that we should ban certain completely safe ubiquitous items like the most common compound on the planet and source of all life (water) because it is too hard to differentiate against some rare dangerous items. Well, there has been no case of flammable or explosive liquids endangering a plane. Don't believe me? Look it up. From wikipedia:

"None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not have passports." He also suggested that suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf invented the plot under torture in Pakistan.[60]

The Register ran a story on the practicalities of producing TATP on board an aeroplane from constituent liquids and concluded that, while theoretically possible, the chances of success would be extremely low. Although following additional details revealed at the trial The Register wrote that the plot and bombing method chosen was viable.[61]

On 18 September, retired Lieutenant-Colonel Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer with decades of anti-terror and explosives experience, declared the plot to be "fiction". He said the explosives in question could not possibly have been produced on the plane. "So who came up with the idea that a bomb could be made on board? Not Al Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is interested in success not deterrence by failure," Wylde stated. He further suggested that the plot was an invention of the UK security services in order to justify wide-ranging new security measures that threaten to permanently curtail civil liberties and to suspend sections of the Human Rights Act of 1998.[62]

On 13 August, Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, claimed that the chaos at airports meant that the terrorists were achieving their aims.[97] On 25 August, O'Leary announced plans to sue the British Government over the disruption to his business.

Sorry to get off topic but it irks me when people buy into this propaganda and security theater that governments have implemented when people travel by air.
 
On 13 August, Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, claimed that the chaos at airports meant that the terrorists were achieving their aims.[97] On 25 August, O'Leary announced plans to sue the British Government over the disruption to his business.

Bravo!!

He is absolutely right. By incrementally increasing the cost and hassle of air travel, the TSA and their security theater shenanigans have almost certainly caused more fatalities (by diverting people from air travel to the highways) than the 9/11 terror attacks to which they reacted.

And the ban on using Part 15 devices is yet another link in the chain.

Just another for-instance:

It is now impossible to take interesting pictures from an airplane because of the ban on portable electronic devices. Certainly no camera equipped with a CCD is not a "portable electronic device," and very likely every film camera made today is at least partially electronic. That means that they cannot be used during the portions of the flight where there is actually interesting scenery to photograph (other than clouds and patchwork farmland).

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Typically air travel is much safer then by motor vehicle. But 30,000 feet and gravity is working against you if a failure happens.

How, exactly, is that statement interesting or informative?
 
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I'm a commercial pilot and use my phone and iPad in the cockpit all the time. These devices do not interfere with flight systems. These policies are a bunch of crap.
 
I don't understand why so many seem to struggle with this. The following all seem undeniable to me:

  1. All (non-trivial) electronic systems radiate.
  2. Failures and defects (software or hardware) can cause the level of radiation to exceed design/approval levels.
  3. Such failures do happen.
  4. All imperfectly shielded electronics is susceptible to EMI.
  5. Perfect shielding is impossible.
  6. Failures and defects can reduce the effectiveness of shielding.
  7. Such failures do happen.

The clear implication of the above is there is at least a plausible theoretical mechanism for personal electronic devices to have some effect on aircraft systems.

Given the huge number of permutations of number of devices of which types in which positions with which defect, quantifying the level of this risk is challenging at best, and has not yet been achieved.

Given the presence of the theoretical risk, it seems perfectly reasonable to play it safe and ban the use of these devices until the level of risk has been quantified.

It is often argued that the fact that some percentage of people ignore the rules, and nobody has died yet, is empirical evidence that it's safe. This argument is bogus - all it says that our experience so far shows that flying with the rules as they are is safe, even with the fraction of people who ignore them. It says nothing about the safety of flying without the rules, which would surely result in greater device usage.

-- HJKL
 
I honestly have not read all 11 pages of this thread, so apologies if these points have been made. I am not an electrical engineer, but I am a scientist who using electronics to amplify, filter and record very small bio-electric signals. In the old days we used to pick interference on electronics from radios and so on, but not these days. Why? Because electronics have become better shielded and designed.

It seems implausible to me that a small electronic device would cause more interferences than, say, the static electricity discharges from the motion of the air against the plane. Also, it is not as though planes drop from the sky when they fly near a cellphone tower, an airport full of people using mobile phones and laptops, or a broadcast radio/TV tower. If mobile phones actually do cause disruptive interference in avionics, then the avionics must be very poorly designed.

The local hospital near me bans mobile phones because they supposedly interfere with equipment. :rolleyes: How do the doctors communicate with each in the hospital? You guessed it - by using mobile phones.
 
My bottle of water, deodorant, shampoo, nail clippers, etc. that the TSA will steal from me if I try to travel with them, has a statistical chance of causing damage to the airplane of ZERO.

No it hasn't. Pour a bottle of water into your computer and see what happens. So, in theory, you can damage electronics with it. Therefore liquids must be banned from all airplanes to mitigate risks.
 
All (non-trivial) electronic systems radiate.

Sure. But the noise from equipment that do not contain wireless transmitters is pretty insignificant, to the degree that it's hard to even measure it. I have to say that I find it quite unreasonable that all electronic devices has to be turned "completely off" during takeoff and landing.

How is "completely off" even defined? In laptops, for example, the battery has a battery controller that never shuts down completely, unless the battery is completely uncharged. Parts of many devices will keep running even if you turn it "off". This is especially true if there is a hardware or software defect like you mention.

Equipment with wireless transmitters is a different story, though.
 
If only it were just take off...it's from the moment the cabin doors close and can be quite a while, upwards of an hour. If you fly a lot, you might understand how this is frustrating, being stuck in a seat with nothing to do because you buy books and magazines electronically...or if you actually have work you plan to do on the flight...idiots are those that justify this nonsense. If electronics were that dangerous we wouldn't be allowed to bring them on the plane.

And if you, like some of us "idiots", bothered to read the actual rules around this stuff you'd find that we're allowed to use electric shavers and even hair dryers during take off and landing.

Also, kind of funny that you'd accuse others of self-importance while you call them idiots...

Electric razors and hair dryers are not trying to communicate with towers and sending out communication signals.

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My reading material is electronic (via Kindle app on iPad). I'm entitled to read it that way and not have to buy a physical book.

You're more than welcome to read it once the plane is at altitude.
 
Sure. But the noise from equipment that do not contain wireless transmitters is pretty insignificant, to the degree that it's hard to even measure it.

It's not necessarily insignificant, particularly when equipment is faulty.

Meeting emission regulations is often challenging. Electronic devices are full of high frequency signals and tracks just waiting to radiate given the chance. All it takes is imperfect screening, an unterminated track or even just a software change and a device which previously met emissions guidelines no longer does.

-- HJKL
 
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