iakobos,
Thank you for your very informed responses. My knowledge of current generation personal communications systems is almost NIL, I can operate my mobile phone in voice and text mode, and that's my limit.
Further checking with the In Flight Supervisor confirms that the "offender" was indeed using a blackberry. After warning, the calls, and the interferance ceased immediately. I don't know a blackberry from a raspberry ripple.
I'd like to get to the bottom o0f this, further checking locally indicates that blackberry sales and use are soaring, and there may well be further repetitions of this event.
The FACTS are -
(1) The offender was using a "blackberry",
(2) The VHF com frequency affected was 133.8, all other frequencies were unaffected
(3) Dial tones, ring tones, and clear voice communications were clearly audible
(4) Reception from ATC on 133.8 was totally blocked, other ATC officers on other frequencies reported that our transmissions on 133.8 and their frequencies were unaffected.
Various responses, including your own iakobos, indicate that the possibility of this occurance is extremely unlikely. Well, be assured that there is no exaggeration in the facts given above.
Unless this is an extremely remote freak occurance, I firmly believe (now) that all mobile phones should be retained at the time of passenger security screening, and returned at the end of the flight. In our case, it caused a severe communications problem, bad enough, but what if the next personal communications "gadget" interferes with the ILS equipment? A total failure of such would be a nuisance, erroneous indications could be disastrous.
I speak as one who was always very sceptical of the mobile phone "menace", I'm now a total convert.
Good work iakobos,
Regards,
Old Smokey