[LINK] 5 Reasons Why E-Books Aren't There Yet

[Ivan Trundle]

On 08/06/2011, at 8:30 PM, Kim Holburn wrote:

> It is astonishing and criminal that a display, for goodness sake, can be taken down by a wifi device.  A simple metallic shield on the cockpit wall would solve most of that and make the cockpit wall more secure.

Except that the it is not conclusive that it's just the display that is affected: the signal for each display in a glass cockpit comes from many sensors around the plane, and in almost all instances, is duplicated or triplicated in case of interference of the physical kind. The effort involved in shielding all cabling is a challenging task and adds many kilos to the overall aircraft weight. It's more efficient to simply ban wireless devices.

(An aside: the recent A380 Qantas incident is now re-writing the air safety books, after it was found that duplicate and triplicate systems backups were hit by shrapnel from the uncontained engine explosion. A 'fluke', for sure, but nonetheless extremely sobering for the chaps who design such systems. Incidentally, and trying to avoid hijacking this thread, the ATSB report on the A380 incident is a gripping read, and it's no wonder that the captain is now touring the speakers' circuit.)

iT

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Ivan Trundle
http://itrundle.com ivan at itrundle.com ph 0418 244 259