Originally Posted by "Saint-Ex
I witnessed one incident in a tri-jet when the autopilot was twitching the controls. A search of the cabin for active mobiles was made but it turned out to be the captain`s `phone in his flight bag. Once turned off, the autopilot gave no more problems. There was also an instance in my company on a B734 where a port engine surge was put down to a passenger in a window seat alongside the engine using his mobile.
You've just added two more bits of 'anecdotical' evidence to a large database.
Why isn't this followed up more?
"Illegal", and simply unintentional, use of mobiles, and ohter PEDs is increasing all the time.
In reply to an earlier letter about fbw, an A320 was subjected to extreme exposure by a radar scanner centered on the avionics bay while configured in flight mode with engines running. I believe this was continued for several hours and no interference was recorded . This was one area where certification authorities really had to be convinced.
Sounds like a particularly pointless exercise to prove/disprove anything. What finally comes out of a wx radar scanner is almost pure X-band radiation (assuming a recent one... are any C-band ones still around ?). Virtually none of that penetrates into an airframe.
We're talking about baseband interference (800MHz not being too far from DME frequencies), and spurious emissions (such as PEDs causing interfrence on NDB frequencies).