PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Is WiFi a potential flight safety problem?
Old 7th June 2003 | 02:24
  #17 (permalink)  
avioniker
 
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 132
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From: USA
Nobody else has brought this up so I will.
Did you ever wonder how a cop knows you're using a radar detector even if it's hidden?
Every electronic component, even a receiver, transmits. Not much but it is measurable. The cop has a detector to pick up the internal amplifier emmissions from the detector.
AM radios used to be notorious for emitting IF radiation which would mess up other radios in the area and was very easy to detect.
In parts of Europe if you didn't pay your TV tax there are vehicles that cruise neighborhoods to see if there are TV's operating in homes where the tax hasn't been paid. They're detecting that emission put out by the TV's.

What I'm leading up to is any electronic component is capable of causing interference with any other component operating on a frequency close to one being emitted.
All amplifiers emit radiation. All data busses require amplification. Computers use data busses to transfer data internally. The processor may be in the 1 or 2 GHz speed range but the data bus probably is operating on a frequency of about 100 to 150 MHz. That has nothing to do with speed. It's the frequency of the bus. Like a radio station frequency. They are equivalent to an AM radio station. The new cell phones are actuall mini computers with internal data busses, with comparitively strong transmitters, and all that implies.

So what you have with a computer is an AM radio station transmitting on a frequency of somewhere near 100 to 150MHz.
VOR and ILS happens to operate on AM in that frequency range. Draw your own conclusions, It's already caused three documented incidents and two missed approaches and been demonstrated to cause localizer deviataions up to 3 degrees by the US Air Force at Wright Pat and NASA.

Turn off the Stinking Status Symbols on takeoff and approach!

I'm done typing.
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