iPad altitude limit

[patrickdunn]

I've use my iPhone to send messages & pictures from the top of Colorado 14er's (14,000ft peaks), all A-OK.

We are beating a dead horse, they are fine at 10,000+ in most instances.

 

[jellybean]

Enough is enough!! I have had it with these mother****ing pads on this mother****ing plane!!

 

[Cloudsurfer]

Keep in mind though that airplane alt and cabin alt are very different. The iPad might physically be at 10.000 ft, but the cabin is pressurized to mimic lower altitudes.

 

[42streetsdown]

Technically speaking, as long as the GPS receiver has a connection to 4 satellites it could give you a (possibly nonsensical when used in high altitudes and outer space because it ain't on earth) location.

i imagine the triangulation works anywhere. the trick is having a map to correlate the data to.

 

[thunderbunny]

Looks close enough and you'll find that most electronics equipment have similar environmental parameters in their specifications. It's not that they won't work outside of those parameters, it's that they aren't designed to work or tested outside of those parameters.

Spot on. 'My' GC- time of flight mass spectrometer also has a limit of 10,000ft although I'm sure it would work fine a wee bit higher. Seems to be a generic number. I did spend a while trying to work out our altitude prior to install before remembering we were next to the Bristol Channel

 

[jfgcf]

Joke, right?


A pressurised cabin is not quite the same as hanging off the wing…
Your iPad will be quite OK. In fact you'd be dead before it becomes unusable.

No, people can breathe up to 15 thousand feet

 

[jfgcf]

Anyone know if the gps has an altitude limit in the iPad?

for start you will not use a GPS on the plane or you can bring many consequences as the plane crash or intereference with radio and GPS (global positing system) works around the world because it will get the information to satellites in the fo***** space.

 

[jfgcf]

You got the first part right. But planes are pressured for comfort, not for survival. You could survive just fine at 30,000 feet, as long as you had oxygen.

I do not mean it for bad but he's right, for example if you dive to great depths without decompression your blood when you came up to the surface was in bubbles and you die

 

[gr8tfly]

One reason altitude limits are placed on displays using CCFL backlights (and any laptop using them) is because of the high-voltage used. As designed, the power supply and cabling assume a certain amount of insulation provided by air. As the altitude increases and density decreases, so to does air's ability to insulate the high-voltage connections and cabling. The result can be arcing, which could damage the cabling, connections, and possibly the supply. (At 18,000', there's about 1/2 the pressure there is at sea level.)

And to reiterate: you cannot survive at 30,000' with just oxygen. It must be pressurized to make up for the low partial pressure at that altitude. In other words, you could breath 100% oxygen, but your body can't absorb it. it'll just give you some extra time before passing out, but can't sustain you continuously (for example, without any oxygen at 24,000', you have about four minutes).

The emergency masks that drop down on airlines aren't pressure masks; they provide enough supplemental oxygen to keep people from passing out during the time the aircraft is making it's emergency descent to 10,000' (and, it's not very long before it's low enough that pressurized oxygen is no longer needed).

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

If anyone wants to donate an iPad, I'll put it into a chamber than can go in excess of 100,000 feet.

Hard drives, high voltage ionization / surface creep, thermal conductivity, and sealed assemblies (capacitors, battery packs, ect...) all can be affected by low air pressure. Not many (if any) electrolytic capacitors on the iPad, the battery and LCD might possibly have an issue - but it's no guarantee of one. Like someone else said further up, it won't likely kill your device, but if it does die, don't expect Apple to shell out the $ for it.

 

[4DThinker]

I suggest no one get high with their iPad. Apple won't warranty what happens then either.

 

[miamialley]

Remember airlines have started allowing pilots to use iPads in the cockpit.

 

[Dunmail]

No, people can breathe up to 15 thousand feet

Actually it is possible to go much higher without supplementary oxygen. Mt Everest (8848 metres or 29,000 ft) has been climbed several times this way as have all of the other 8000 metre peaks. I've been to 7200 metres myself, roughly 23,000 ft with no problem.

The problems arise not from lack of oxygen (the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere is the same ) but the significantly lower pressure at these altitudes, typically 1/3 to 1/4 of that at sea level, which leads to the lungs being unable to work correctly as the transmission mechanism, osmosis, relies on the pressure to push the oxygen through the lung walls. The lack of pressure also leads to fluids leaking from individual cells as they also rely on the pressure to maintain state - this is pulmonary oedema.

Back on topic, I suspect that the "limit" will be due to the setup of most environmental testing facilities - most consumer electronics are going to be used in the home, office or similar environments so why go to the expense of testing for conditions that only a miniscule proportion of users are likely to visit. Of course having an iPad operate from the summit of Mt Everest would be a propaganda coup - there have been phone calls from the summit so it's not impossible.

 

[0007776]

No, people can breathe up to 15 thousand feet

And a lot higher than that if your in good shape and take time to get used to the altitude. People have climbed everest without oxygen, I think I read about someone making a call from the top on an android so I bet the iPad would work up there if you really wanted to bring it.

 

[spiderman0616]

This gets thread of the month.

Actually, the first time I ever saw an iPad in real life was on an airplane. So even iPad 1 was airplane compatible!

 

[jonnyb168]

Comedy Value

This should go in the 1 liner Thread. The reason its pressurised to 6000ft is because at that altitude the air is just about thin enough to help everyone relax.

 

[nicks]

Because they can't guarantee that the case won't crack if you drop it from a height of more than 10,000 feet.

should be no problem if you drop it from 9,999 feet, but you might want to use a case just in case

 

[Meanee]

Would have to look up the specs for that particular chipset.

Of course, all civilian GPS units are supposed to have display limits of either 60,000 feet or 999 knots.

Yesterday I have tested ForeFlight on my new iPAD in my Mooney 252 up to 17.000 ft and everything worked fine. Apple had posted the iPAD would only work up to 10.000ft.

I suspect this limitation comes from the limitation for hard disks that work only up to 10.000ft because of the thin air. Because of that limitation, I had already modified a Sony Vajo 8 years ago with an SSD, so I could use Jepperson FlightMap IFR during my long flights at 25.000 ft.

The iPad with ForeFlight seems the ideal set for aviation.

While others suspected the temperature would rise with alititude, I also measured the temperature which was stable during that 1 hour flight.

I am in the process to prepare a video for YouTube with my findings, as many pilots are interested to use the iPad also in non-pressurized aircraft at higher altitudes.

Karl-Heinz Zahorsky
Commercial Pilot, MEI
N228RM
Sarasota, Florida

How are you finding ForeFlight? Would it be worth for a student pilot? I have 18 hours, approaching my 1st solo.

To other poster mentioned towers:
Also, GPS does use towers. It does not depend on them, but there's a system, called WAAS. Stands for Wide Area Augmentation System. Mostly used in aviation. Provides more precise data by using ground stations to do small correction to the GPS. My Garmin GPSMap 196 has it, but rarely catches the signal while on the ground.

 

[Julien]

for start you will not use a GPS on the plane or you can bring many consequences as the plane crash...

How so, since GPS is passive? You are only receiving a signal and transmitting anything.

 

[Meanee]

How so, since GPS is passive? You are only receiving a signal and transmitting anything.

Current GPS restrictions on some airlines are more due to the security. Apparently, a terrorist can see when the plane is over a high value target and do something about it. Like enroute map in inflight entertainment system won't work

 

[fedup flyer]

And to reiterate: you cannot survive at 30,000' with just oxygen.

Apparently you don't know squat about flight physiology.
Yes you can survive hours on end at 30,000' with just O2. The old B-17 used to do booming runs in the mid 20s and all they had was an O2 mask and a heater suit. Partial pressure doesn't fall off enough until about 60,000' to do what your trying to describe. Oh yeah, I used to teach a class in flight physiology.

Back to regular programming.

 

[darngooddesign]

Joke, right?

A pressurised cabin is not quite the same as hanging off the wing…
Your iPad will be quite OK. In fact you'd be dead before it becomes unusable.

No, people can breathe up to 15 thousand feet

But you would loose your grip, fall and die.

 

[firoze]

The FAA recently certified the iPad for use as an EFB (Electronic Flight Bag) by airline pilots. Part of that certification process was subjecting the iPad to explosive decompression at 35000ft. It passed that test with flying colours. So one can rest assured that it's absolutely safe to use the iPad at least up to an atmospheric altitude of 35000ft. (As far as commercial aircraft are concerned, as others have already stated here, the cabin altitude would not exceed 8000ft under normal circumstances).

 

[Patrickd123]

I am a private pilot. Flying my unpressurized Cessna I never had to fly over 10000 feet but my gps always gave me a fix up to at least 7000 feet. iPad GPS is not a real gps. Real gps use satellite signal to triangulate their position. iPad GPS used cell towers to triangulate their positions. To the maximum height is more a maximum distance from ground cell towers which at 10000 feet is roughly 3 kilometers.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Anyone know if the gps has an altitude limit in the iPad?

Why would you think that?

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I am a private pilot. Flying my unpressurized Cessna I never had to fly over 10000 feet but my gps always gave me a fix up to at least 7000 feet. iPad GPS is not a real gps. Real gps use satellite signal to triangulate their position. iPad GPS used cell towers to triangulate their positions. To the maximum height is more a maximum distance from ground cell towers which at 10000 feet is roughly 3 kilometers.

Excuse me but my cellualr iPad Air has a REAL GPS module built in as do all cellular iPads.

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How are you finding ForeFlight? Would it be worth for a student pilot? I have 18 hours, approaching my 1st solo.

To other poster mentioned towers:
Also, GPS does use towers. It does not depend on them, but there's a system, called WAAS. Stands for Wide Area Augmentation System. Mostly used in aviation. Provides more precise data by using ground stations to do small correction to the GPS. My Garmin GPSMap 196 has it, but rarely catches the signal while on the ground.

18 hours? My solo came after only 10 hours.....