As I understand one of the issues with cell phones in aircraft, is not 
the aircraft but, the cell tower to phone radio link is intended to be 
short range with the phone only to be in contact with a few towers at a 
time. When the phone is elevated (in an airplane at altitude), the 
number of towers in range in increased by many, and if sufficient phone 
to tower links are generated, bandwidth becomes a problem. People have 
claimed using their phone in the air with no problems, but maybe that's 
because others have minded the regulation, and if a few arriving 747's 
had everyone notifying their friends of their arrival time, might be a 
problem. 

On our plane we had a problem with a temperature probe  (16 type K 
thermocouples) instrument going into alarm mode when VHF transmitting on 
certain channels. Not apples and oranges, but hard telling what kind of 
issues appear.

Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> Russell McMahon wrote:
>
>   
>> What is happening is that the blanket is capacitively coupling mains
>> voltage via them to you and via your body capacitance to local ground.
>> (My comment about the 'glass house' notes that the final return path may
>> be via return distributed resistance. The precise mechanism is not
>> crucial to the basic demonstration). 
>>
>> Body capacitance to the blanket is probably 100's of pF and from body to
>> ground is highly variable and lower. It's entirely possible that there
>> is no deleterious effect from acting as a capacitor plate for mains
>> leakage in this manner. But, in the absence of at least statistical
>> indications to the contrary, if this didn't make you at least uncertain
>> about the possible effects of such an environment on pregnant women then
>> I'd be just a little surprised. 
>>     
>
> Imagine a chip that is much more complex than your average PC processor and
> works on a lower voltage. Are you sure that sending this capacitive current
> through the chip (mind you, the chip was not designed for that current)
> doesn't change its normal function -- and if it does change it, do you know
> how?
>
> There is also this thing with mobile phones. Many people are quite certain
> that they don't affect anything in our brains, yet I can't even have such a
> phone turned on while an aircraft is in the air. The potentially affected
> equipment in the aircraft has been designed to withstand radiation of the
> type the mobile phone emits and is often tens of meters away, yet it
> apparently may be affected enough to cause malfunction. The human nervous
> system has not been designed (has not developed, if you want) to withstand
> that type of radiation and it is much closer to the phone than the
> aircraft's equipment -- and we understand it much less. How come it seems
> so unreasonable (to some) that the function of the human nervous system may
> be affected by this radiation?
>
> Gerhard
>
>   
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist