The first cellphone I had was a Panasonic E-series car phone in 1991 which was fitted to the brand new car I treated myself to after Gulf War 1. The phone cost £345.03, there was a handset and hands-free speaker cradle in the car; the transceiver was the size of a small book and was fitted in the boot. Excellent phone, but I wouldn't have wanted the so-called 'transportable' attachment as it was the size of a small brief case.
The old "Ya, OK, buy! Like the 911?" city-spiv-in-red-braces phones were certainly the size of a house brick, but the more compact Nokia phones and Motorola flip-phones were released long before 1994. Of course anyone issued with a mobile phone by the RAF in those days would probably have had to put up with the old house-brick-with-black-dick ex-yuppie phones...
Which brings me to the point of the post. When I first had a Nokia 2110 GSM phone (£276.13) and car kit (£258.50) in 1995, there were few if any rules governing use of such things in aircraft. Gone were the days of trying to contact Artichoke on HF with your arrival message, just ring them on the spiv phone whilst the other chap taxyed in. HM used to reimburse the bill for calls made for service reasons and several AAR trails was salvaged by my GSM phone loaned to the route AARC.
So, if there weren't any rules in 1995, just what rules
were in force for important anti-terrorist police flying in a helicopter? And just what (excluding weird Wally's wacky wirelesses allegedly used by SEALS seducing the crew towards the rocks like some latter-day Sirens) were they carrying? Did one or more police pocket radios suddenly start 'hand shaking' with a terminal as the aircraft approached the Mull? And how much EMC testing had been done to assess the vulnerability of FADEC to RFI from such devices?
Given that Radio Free Europe used to cause Tornado UCMs at Panavia's Manching aerodrome - and that serious concern existed about truckers using illegal 'boots' (high-powered RF amplifiers) with CBs on the A1 under the approach to Cottesmore, has the possibility of passenger radio interference to the Chinook's systems ever been ruled out "with no doubt whatsoever"?
Thought not.....
