

  (Source: NBC Universal)








Source: The New York Times

Comments     Threshold


RE: A load of BS
By MrTeal on 12/14/2011 12:56:23 PM , Rating: 5
I worked at an electronics assembly company where the production workers had to have ESD wrist straps connected whenever they were handling or getting components. That extended even to components like resistors or connectors, even though you can't damage those devices with ESD. The reason the company made those arbitrary rules even though they don't make sense in that case is that it's cheaper and safer to have all the workers spend the extra time strapping in for everything they do rather than try and teach them which components are ESD resistant, which are susceptible, and which are very sensitive.

My iPod classic is almost certainly not going to bring down a plane. I shouldn't have to turn it off. That doesn't mean every piece of electronics is safe, and moreover is doesn't mean that even ones that would normally be safe aren't out of spec or damaged and transmitting in bands they shouldn't be. Flight attendants are there to give an annoying speech about emergency egress and serve you drinks, not to serve as a judge of which devices are safe and which could cause a problem. There's probably a pretty small chance of a plane coming down from this, but it wouldn't take much if you had some cheap Chinese knockoff phone broadcast on Verizon @ 787MHz but due to crappy design letting enough energy out at a second harmonic of 1575MHz, which is right about where GPS L1 is. It might not bring down a plane, but you're not leaving the tarmac if the GPS signal is being jammed.

RE: A load of BS
By drycrust3 on 12/14/2011 3:25:40 PM , Rating: 2

As I understand it, the origin of this sort of rule was the fact that at one time the 455KHz Superhetrodyne intermediate frequency used in an AM radio, or the modulations of it, is very close to one of the frequency bands used in the aviation industry.
Essentially, anything that transmits or receives has built in oscillators, and as you say, there is no guarantee that some fluke combination of the oscillator modulation output won't interfere with the aircraft navigation.

