Re: mobile phones

Eric Greenwell <flyguy26e@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Marc Ramsey wrote:
jeplane wrote:
However, you should not forget that the use of cell phones aboard
airborne aircrafts is banned by the FCC in 47 C.F.R. ? 22.925:
(Oct 1, 2006 revision) states "Cellular telephones installed in or
carried aboard airplanes, balloons or any other type of aircraft must
not be operated while such aircraft are airborne. When any aircraft
leaves the ground, all cellular telephones on board that aircraft must
be turned off."

47 CFR 22.295 applies only to "cellular telephones" (i.e. the old analog
things that operated in the 800 MHz band) licensed under Part 22. Most
of us now carry PCS (personal communications services) phones licensed
under Part 24, and as far as I can tell, the FCC has no regulations
against their use in flight...

My cursory Google search backs up Marc's comments (not that I doubted
him - I was just curious about the details). So, unless someone can find
contrary documents, this may be the end of one of our favorite perennial
threads. May "Cell phone use in gliders" rest in peace.

It would make sense (not that we necessarily expect the FAA to make
sense). My understanding is that the major problem with cell phones on GA
craft was simply that the old-style cell networks couldn't handle them. An
active cell phone in the air would be within range of a bunch of different
towers which caused confusion in the network, since it was built on the
assumption that the ground would limit your line of sight so that you
would only be in range of two or three towers at a time.

Modern networks don't have this problem so this reason goes away. Of
course there's still the issue of interference with avionics and such
which is why they're still banned on airliners, although as I noted in a
previous post, it seems that this ban isn't all that effective. For most
GA pilots the interference thing isn't too important, since even if you
did need them and even if they did start going wonky, you can always just
turn off the phone.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software
.

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