Firstoff, I would like to thank TimS for posting a bunch of studies. It shows that there are extremely rare cases where electronics might affect instrumentation, but at least gives some slight basis for rules.
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Originally Posted by pricecw
They might, not really a big deal though, if you look at a track of most GPSs you can buy, you will see points where there is a straight line jump from one position to the next, generally this is an area where the GPS isn't tracking, and doesn't get a point or so. Not a big deal on your cell phone, car navigation, hiking, etc, and generally within the specs for a consumer GPS, take the Magellan Maestro 4700, it's specs for resolution "GPS Accuracy 3-5 meters", which is much better than used to be available with SA enabled.
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My GPS can be set to pull data at specific intervals. I presume that is what happens here.
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Originally Posted by pricecw
Now, wrt trying to harden a plane to consumer devices, it is almost an impossible task. You would have to get every conceivable device, and test those in all combinations with all combinations of planes to prove there can't be a problem (probably add in the mix every possible location in the plane for each device on each plane). Everytime a product is introduced or update, or a new plane is introduced, or something is changed on a plane, you would need to re-do these. Worst scenario is a new consumer device introduced or a device changed, since all combinations would need to be tried. All devices would need to be tested until the last one fell out of use.
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Not really, because you are only interested in certain frequencies and possibly their harmonics.
Since most devices are quite limited in the frequencies that they can transmit, things become much easier.
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Originally Posted by pricecw
That would be the only way to prove your device can't cause problems.
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You truly cannot 'prove' that the device cannot cause problems. All you can ever hope to do is to demonstrate that the probability of serious problems means that the rule is worth the cost (in time and resources) of enforcing that rule.
And given the low probabilities shown in these studies, I think that we already have reasons why the rule is not worth even the time it takes to turn the devices off.
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Originally Posted by wodin
Do you really want to trust the lives of several hundred passengers and crew of an airliner to Adam and Jamie?
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I would trust them over a random bureaucrat.
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Originally Posted by Sweetpea
But it's not only phones that have to be shut off. I was asked to turn of my digital camera! How would you block that?
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Back in the late '90s, I took a digital camera with me on a cruise. When I went through customs, they kept insisting that I needed to open the back of the camera and show them the film.
It took 15 minutes and taking a picture before we got through with it. Taking the picture was risky, because we could have gotten pulled aside for doing it for not obeying Customs officials. But they were not familiar with the technology and so wanted to stick to an archaic rule.