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Also on 9/11/01...

BenBurch

Gatekeeper of The Left
BenBurch
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Also on 9/11/01;

http://256.com/gray/thoughts/2001/20010912/delta_flight_1989_9_11/travel.shtml

[My spouse] and I and six other fellow [...] employees were on the 8 am flight from Boston to Los Angeles on Tuesday, but we were on the Delta flight [1989], the one out of three 8am flights departing Logan that did not get hijacked. Instead, we were forced to make an emergency landing in Cleveland because there were reports that a bomb or hijacking was taking place on our plane. The pilot had radioed that there was suspicious activity in the cabin since one of the passengers was speaking urgently on his cellphone and ignored repeated flight attendant requests to stop using his cell phone while in flight. Also, there was an irregularity in the passenger manifest because there were two people [with the same middle eastern name] who were listed but only one aboard.
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I think we just achieved full thread derail...

st-derail2.jpg
 
We? What's this we? :D

I'll take your avoidance of the question as tacit admission of guilt.

We can move on.
 
I'm trying to see if there's anything I can nitpick about this story that will prove it to be a shill hit piece.

So far all I have found is that the webmaster's name is "Watson", which may or may not be a Jewish name.
 
Getting back to the topic;

There are also several incidents that have been reported in the news of passengers making EMS calls from aircraft that were making bad weather of their passages and/or were making unscheduled landings due to mechanical problems. Basically just people so wigged-out with fear that they wanted to call somebody - anybody - and plead for help. Now, what they thought EMS on the gorund would do for them up in the air I don't know...
 
Ben:
I design the networks side. It can depend on altitude and speed. But just as importantly, it can depend on the geometry of the base stations and the aircraft.

So LC, just determine where the base stations were located that were being used and the altitude, heading and speed of 1989, and you can determine if it was impossible. However, since we have a statement from the passenger, do we really need to do that?
 
Also depends a lot on the sort of cellphone. I am VERY certain that my old brick phone, which could emit 2.5 watts at peak, with the full-sized antenna would have a MUCH easier time of it than my current PCS phone which can manage only about .6 watt. But, yes, geometry matters. And where you are on the aircraft. Those wings are mirrors and can help the process if you are in the right place.

However, with an older Motorola flip phone prototype, we did not have too much problem communicating from altitude while paralleling an interstate in "flyover" country back in 1993.
 
The wattage may not matter as much as it sounds. The old brick phone was analog. GSM and CDMA phones have processing gain due to coding, so they aren't directly comparable.

Sorry for the derail. :)
 
slyjoe said:
The wattage may not matter as much as it sounds. The old brick phone was analog. GSM and CDMA phones have processing gain due to coding, so they aren't directly comparable.

Sorry for the derail. :)
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well digital processing would certainly help in making a clear call once the connection to the tower is established, but a higher powered radio would help in making that connection in the first place, so i would think it does make a difference

sorry for continuing the derail :o (is it really a derail? thats the actual topic? lol)
 
defaultdotxbe said:
well digital processing would certainly help in making a clear call once the connection to the tower is established, but a higher powered radio would help in making that connection in the first place, so i would think it does make a difference

sorry for continuing the derail :o (is it really a derail? thats the actual topic? lol)
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A connection isn't done in the RF domain and then the digital domain - they are married. That is why newer phones (and towers) can be lower power but get the same range.

I know it's not intuitive, but it does work. :)
 
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