Flying? PLEASE TURN CELLPHONE OFF

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I'm not sure I ever want to fly in anything that can get fucked up by a little electrical interference.

You wonder why, though, that airplanes won't ban other potentially harmful electronics if cell phones are really that bad. A guy with a laptop with the wireless card turned on? A poorly made CD player? They say iPods fuck with pacemakers, why not airplanes?

It occured to me that many people aren't really all that educated on how EMI works. I'm not singling you out, Mikey.

First of all, your CD player has a low intensity, narrow bandwidth, tight beam "transmitter" or, basically, a laser. It's not on the same frequency or emitting at a high enough power level to interfere with instrumentation (Much less than one watt, I believe).

Furthermore, electronic devices can interefere with each other in two ways: their power source/circuitry and if they transmit radio/microwave/infrared. Typically, something you plug into the wall is going to have a magnetic field that is constantly oscillating at 60hz, unless properly shielded (it might be different depending on what part of the world you live in, different countries have different standards). These oscillations can cause interference in the 60hz range in the EM spectrum. Nothing I can think of off the tope of my head actually operates on this frequency, however, should the oscillations be strong enough (have enough energy behind them) like, say from a 76,000 volt line (which is common in major cities) it can create serious issues.

Cell-phones (GSM and 3G standard typically operate at about 900mhz, 1800mhz and 3.6Ghz), Blue Tooth, 802.11b/g standard wireless devices and such TX at about 2400MHz (2.4 Ghz), which would be about the same frequency as a lot of the instrumentation in question. With the exception of accelerometers and radar altimeters (which typically operate in the 9Ghz range). These devices don't transmit at huge wattages, but 3 or 4 watts is enough power to carry a signal like 20-some miles in the right conditions.

Jam it back in, in the dark.