Planes & Cell phones

G.R. Patterson III wrote:
snip
Now, if you have one of those "personal communication systems" (AKA "PCS phones"),
you will not have this problem in the air. These phones use frequency sets in the 900
MhZ range, use different technology, and are legal to use in the air. Of course,

Are you sure PCS phones are legal in the air? As I understand it, this
is a hotly debated topic.

I'm in the process of turning my old cell phone back on. I have a
Qualcomm dual-mode phone that as I understand it is illegal to use in
the air. If a Sprint PCS phone is legal to use I would consider
changing phones. (Thought about an Iridium sat phone, but the $1.25/min
charges changed my mind!)

Elwood Dowd wrote:

G.R. Patterson III wrote:
snip
Now, if you have one of those "personal communication systems" (AKA "PCS phones"),
you will not have this problem in the air. These phones use frequency sets in the 900
MhZ range, use different technology, and are legal to use in the air. Of course,

Are you sure PCS phones are legal in the air? As I understand it, this
is a hotly debated topic.

There is no US FCC regulation against using PCS phones (which do not use the old 800 Mhz
band) in the air. There IS a US FCC regulation against using Part 22 devices in the air,
which would include 800 Mhz AMPS service (traditional analog cellular) as well as newer
digital services in this same band. Sprint and T-Mobile are examples of wireless carriers
which are strictly PCS. Some companies may use both the 800 band and something else. (And
GSM is now starting to be used in the 800 Mhz band in the US, not just in the US 1900 Mhz
band.)

However, the terms of service for each carrier may prohibit airborne operation.

"Greg Copeland" wrote in message
news
Recentingly, in another thread, cell phones and planes came up. I
thought others might be interested in these links.


I don't know about any FCC regulation as it relates to airspeed and I doubt
that any such regulation could be effectively enforced.

Cell phone jacks for headsets are a popular item. Actually using a cell
phone in an airplane is difficult. You get a lot of dropped calls. I
wouldn't want to try to fool with it while doing the flying. It is very
handy to report in if I am going to be late returning on a cross country.

No one has ever come up with any solid evidence that cellular phones
interfere with radios, blow up gas tanks, or do any of the other evil things
that cellular phones are supposed to do.

In article , Greg Copeland wrote:
Recentingly, in another thread, cell phones and planes came up. I
thought others might be interested in these links.

Here is a first-hand cautionary tale on cell phones in flight.

It was a dark and stormy night (well, dark and rainy at least), and I
was flying with a friend back from Yorkshire to the IOM. It was my
friend's first "for real" ILS in the muck.

The flight was progressing well, and I was handling the radios, and
monitoring my friend's progress as we intercepted the localiser. It was
at that point we discovered his cell phone was still on and his wife was
calling. We found this out when through the audio we heard "Bp bb b b b
bp b b b bp b b bp brbrbrbrbrbrbbrbrbrbrbrbbrbrbrbrbrbrbrb!" at high
volume. If ATC called us at this point we wouldn't have heard. We
couldn't even hear each other over the intercom. I took over whilst he
got the thing turned off. Fortunately, it didn't intefere with the
localiser/glideslope.

Good job he wasn't solo or he'd have had to fly the ILS in a NORDO
condition, possibly not getting his landing clearance.

I think the inteference was picked up by the headset leads - his headset
lead went right over the pocket he had the phone in. (Also note we have
a different cell phone frequency here compared to the US, so US
cellphones might intefere with different things instead).

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Thanks very much for a comprehensive answer! Not many of those are to
be found on usenet.

Lisa wrote:

There is no US FCC regulation against using PCS phones (which do not use the old 800 Mhz
band) in the air. There IS a US FCC regulation against using Part 22 devices in the air,
which would include 800 Mhz AMPS service (traditional analog cellular) as well as newer
digital services in this same band. Sprint and T-Mobile are examples of wireless carriers
which are strictly PCS. Some companies may use both the 800 band and something else. (And
GSM is now starting to be used in the 800 Mhz band in the US, not just in the US 1900 Mhz
band.)

However, the terms of service for each carrier may prohibit airborne operation.

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 03:43:32 +0000, G.R. Patterson III wrote:



Greg Copeland wrote:

The general theory on modern cell phones in flight, goes like this:
The FCC also has a ban because when you're in flight, you're always at
least 6-8 miles away from the nearest cell tower. You end up communicating
with too many towers and bogging down the network.

No, you could be right beside the nearest tower. In general, any tower within about
20 miles of you will be able to receive you when you're on the ground (unless
something's blocking the signal). To eliminate conflict between calls, towers that
are neighbors use different frequency sets. When you make a call, the control system
polls all of the towers that can "hear" you and tells the closest one to accept the
call. That tower tells your phone what frequency pair to use. After that, only that
tower can "hear" your phone. If you move too far away, the control system will poll
all the towers again and have your phone switch frequencies.

You exactly described what I less eloquently described elsewhere. What you described
qualifies as, "bogging down the network." It's not that you're "talking" on all these
towers. It's that you are using resources on all these towers at a very
high rate, as you move along, causing your call to jump from tower to
tower, in turn, causing the cycle to repeat over and over. Now, multiply
that with lots of other people using their phones on a plane, and I
think that clearly qualifies as, "You end up communicating with too many
towers and bogging down the network."


That's the complaint.

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 01:45:25 +0000, G.R. Patterson III wrote:



Greg Copeland wrote:

I thought I might just toss this out there. I quickly looked. I did not
have any trouble finding modern, handheld phones, with 2-watts output.

They almost certainly are not cell phones. Probably PCS.

I'm using layman's terminology, which would cover PCM, GSM, etc, etc, etc...

In article , Tim Baron wrote:
x-no-archive: yes
"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:


Now, if you have one of those "personal communication systems"
(AKA "PCS phones"),

Not 900 Mhz in the US. Perhaps you meant to say 1900 Mhz range.

What is PCS? Is it just marketdroid speak for GSM? (IIRC, the US uses
1900MHz for GSM)

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article , C J Campbell wrote:
No one has ever come up with any solid evidence that cellular phones
interfere with radios, blow up gas tanks, or do any of the other evil things
that cellular phones are supposed to do.

I doubt they blow up gas tanks or the other evil things, but I have
first hand personal experience of a mobile phone intefering with either
the intercom or the COM radio of an aircraft (see earlier post in this
thread).

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Dylan Smith wrote:
In article , Tim Baron wrote:

x-no-archive: yes
"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:


Now, if you have one of those "personal communication systems"

(AKA "PCS phones"),


Not 900 Mhz in the US. Perhaps you meant to say 1900 Mhz range.


What is PCS? Is it just marketdroid speak for GSM? (IIRC, the US uses
1900MHz for GSM)

No, it's just the term used to distinguish the newer 1900 MHz frequency
band from the older 800 MHz cellular band. The FCC auctioned off the
1900 MHz frequencies to allow more carriers to offer 'cellular-type'
services in each region and to make some money for the government.
GSM is one technology used by some of those carriers in this band, but
CDMA and TDMA technologies are also used.