FAA Provisionally Clears 90% of Aircraft To Fly Near 5G Networks (bloomberg.com) 40
About 90% of the U.S. commercial aircraft fleet is at least somewhat shielded from interference caused by new 5G wireless networks, the Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday. From a report: The FAA expanded the roster of aircraft that it says can perform "most" low-visibility landings in the presence of the 5G radio waves to include several models of regional jets, according to a notice on the agency's website. The FAA approvals don't cover every plane at every airport, and are subject to revisions each month as the agency reviews the addition of new 5G cell towers, the agency said. They could also be limited if wireless companies increase power levels. New wireless phone service that began on Jan. 19 broadcasting on frequencies near those used by aircraft has prompted the FAA to raise concerns about radio interference. The latest action by the agency combined with an agreement by wireless companies to temporarily limit power levels and the placement of cell towers near airports has meant that the most severe impacts have been avoided for now.
The other 10% ... (Score:4, Funny)
FAA Provisionally Clears 90% of Aircraft To Fly Near 5G Networks
The other 10% will have to land, drive/taxi around the 5G areas, then take off again.
Passengers may encounter flight delays during rush-hour traffic.
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I expect those 10% will probably will need to upgrade their electronics, or be relegated to flying in rural areas, or just grounded.
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Nah, they just need to wait for the FAA to get around to testing them. Maybe grease the right palms to jump ahead in the queue.
Last week it was 25%, then 50%, then 75%, now we're at 90%.
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Nah, 90% of all planes, but we worked really hard to saw off the back 10% of our airplanes this week.
Flights cancelled at Paine field due to fog+5g... (Score:2)
https://www.usnews.com/news/be... [usnews.com]
Trevor Jacob (Score:2)
I hope Trevor jacob is in the 10% not allowed to fly.
747/777 (Score:2)
Re: 747/777 (Score:2)
Boing penny pinching strikes again
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Harmonics and spurs are things, but more often the concern is that the planes use older equipment that does not have a very sharp input filter (making the receiver simpler and more robust), and it does not attenuate the energy in the 5G band enough. That energy gets aliased into the altimeter's return signal, causing ambiguity or erroneous behavior.
That kind of problem wouldn't happen originally because that part of C band was used for satellite downlink signals, and they are way lower power (especially af
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They aren't and they don't.
Re: 747/777 (Score:4, Informative)
That, sir, is not what is happening. What is happening is that the manufacturers of critical airliner equipment are so incompetent that their equipment is vulnerable to interference from outside their allotment. It is literally the opposite of what you said.
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Interference that, when those instruments were built, would never have been encountered.
Designing for "someday, possibly decades from now, the licensed satellite downlink frequencies might be repurposed for phone service use, we'd better be sure that we can filter those frequencies at extra expense and maybe a bit of reduced functionality" is not a sane way to operate your aircraft instrument business.
When those instruments were designed, phone service operated in the 800/900 MHz range.
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>> when those instruments were built, would never have been encountered.
Wrong.
Interference happens every day.
Not only from controlled emitters.
Every light switch, DC motor, car ignition, etc... create wideband interference.
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Designing for "someday, possibly decades from now, the licensed satellite downlink frequencies might be repurposed for phone service use, we'd better be sure that we can filter those frequencies at extra expense and maybe a bit of reduced functionality" is not a sane way to operate your aircraft instrument business.
I have the opposite view. Designing for "someday something might use this neighboring frequency outside my allotment and I don't know what it is and this is critical equipment which must work correctly or it might kill people" is the only sane way to operate your aircraft instrument business. But I guess to you money is more important than lives.
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Sure, that might make sense - IF AND ONLY IF that frequency was unused and unallocated. But it wasn't, it was allocated and in use for satellite downlinks, which was a non-interfering use.
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the manufacturers of critical airliner equipment are so incompetent that their equipment is vulnerable to interference from outside their allotment.
Worth mentioning that no equipment has been found yet that is vulnerable to such interference.
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That's a fair point, and one I hadn't encountered. I was under the impression that interactions had actually been observed.
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They aren't. It's the other way around.
Somebody had a graph of the front end filters on the radars. Their FWHM looked to be about 1 GHz.
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What are 747S class and 777S class? There is a 747SP, which was manufactured starting in 1975 and ending in 1989 (there are something like 6 still flying). Can't find any reference to a 777S at all.
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Fly near 5g but... (Score:2)
Only if it's NOT Huawei kit, if it's Huawei then you can't! Unless you're a big fuken su-57, then you do whatever the hell you want.
They should have done this years ago (Score:2)
They had plenty of warning, but were too neglectful or incompetent to deal with it until the last second.
Does 5G have ANY impact on airplanes at all? (Score:1)
My girlfriend worked at a medical clinic where they put a sign out front that read, "Due to interference with medical equipment, we require that all cell phones be turned off in the lobby."
However, she explained to me, the reason that they set this policy was because the people who worked in the lobby thought that it was annoying how people were on their cell phones.
I remember a few years back (maybe a decade?) when there was a rash of articles about, "What do you think about people talking on their phones
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Yes, the frequencies used for 5G are close enough to those used in some avionics that there is a risk, so the FAA is testing to find out. It's just stupid that they didn't figure this out and do the testing a year or two ago.
But there is a lot of stuff about not using cell phones that's just as you described. For flights with in-flight Wi-Fi, you aren't allowed to use it for VoIP calls, even though there's not technical reason not to; it wouldn't even use very much bandwidth compared to anything with vide
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The cell phone ban was never about interfering with the plane. It was an FCC (not FAA) rule, because the phones in planes hit too many towers at once with approximately the same signal strength, and hopped from tower to tower very fast. This was bad for the cell phone network. Those problems have been largely resolved, but there still is the annoyance factor, which is a damn good reason to continue the phone ban on planes.
Licensed for ground use only. (Score:2)
>> because the phones in planes hit too many towers at once with approximately the same signal strength
That is absolutely true.
But the real administrative reason is that a mobile phone is licensed for ground use, and not for air or space use.
Different rules.
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B.S.
A band close to another never made interference.
Equipment with badly designed front-end filters is the root cause of this failure of some aviation actors.
With correct design, you can receive signals extremely close to a transmitter, even when both are on the same antenna.
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I don't think there is any documented case of cell phone interference with commercial passenger aircraft controls. They still ban use of cell phones because it does reduce the rf spectrum complexity on board an airplane.
Also, no one wants to lift a policy and then have an incident. Policies like cell phone bans are like barbed hooks: they go in but they don't come out.
I'm fine with no cell phones on planes. I don't feel the need to call while I am flying and I don't want the idiot next to me gabbing awa
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quote>Moot point as no one actually uses the phone function any more.Quite right.
I call mine "My smart camera that can also make phone calls."
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Nope. The ban of mobiles does not have anythiing whatsoever to do with aircraft interference.
If it would, you would have to switch off your mobile in the airport terminal.
The real administrative reason is that a mobile phone is licensed for ground use, and not for air or space use.
Different rules because different propagation.
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Does 5G have any impact on airplanes at all?
The scientific question that could have been answered long ago by putting a goddam 5g tower near the tarmac on any training airfield and buzzing the tower with all manner of aircraft.
This whole campaign sounds like a PR stunt to get us talking about 5g.
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Does 5G have any impact on airplanes at all?
No impact has been found yet in all the testing done so far.
Testing is worth doing, but it seems to not be an issue.