On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:11:30 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:31:03 -0800, Darren New wrote:
>> 
>>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> There's probably nothing that prevents the cell signal from being
>>>> used, and if the plane is already doomed, turning on a cell phone
>>>> isn't likely to make things worse.
>>> The primary reason not to do this is that your phone will be in range
>>> of many more towers than you normally would be. For some cell systems,
>>> this is a Bad Thing, for performance, capacity, and possibly even for
>>> routing. It probably has nothing to do with the actual plane
>>> electronics.
>> 
>> Well, I do recall that the Mythbusters tested this myth, and it rated
>> "plausible" with relation to the electronics.  Still, I've been on
>> plenty of planes where people have not turned off their phones and they
>> all made it to their destination without incident...
> 
> Um, yeah. That's waht I was saying. It's not a problem for the airplane.
> It's a problem for the phone carriers.

Well, no, shielding against those signals is a problem for the designers 
and builders of the airplane.  They found that there were circumstances 
where cell phone transmissions did affect the instruments in the plane.

I was quite surprised by that finding, but then again, it seems when the 
myths have something to do with breaking the law (and the FARs are law), 
then the findings tend to support not breaking the law.

Jim

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