PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost
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Old 15th Mar 2014, 17:28
  #4010 (permalink)  
Sorry Dog
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Mosquitoville
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For those that mentioned possible SLF cell phone contacts....

That is unlikely.

Cell tower antennae are usually tuned to have optimal performance in 120 degree arc by 60 degree or less elevation. Depending on the frequency and a ton of other factors, practical range is 2 or 3 miles at best (that goes for SMS as well). On an airplane that means something like 10k feet since slant range will be approaching 3 miles, but usually much less because of being outside of antenna cone and an aluminum airframe does a wonderful job of attenuating signals.

Best you can hope for is a stray tower got a stray ping, which would give you a circle of a few miles. Now LTE relies on GPS for timing, but not sure if location data is a part of the ping data packets, and I'm not even sure if that data is saved. I don't administer towers... I just build/upgrade/fix them and leave.
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