The only grievance that seems reasonable to me in this article is the practice of how Southwest rebooks you when they go through a major schedule change (which has happen to people I know twice in the last year). Have a 7A flight scheduled. Southwest scrambles their schedules or drops that flight in particular and reassigns you the 530A fight. And then you have to call to get reassigned to the 10A flight and then convince them to do it without charging you more money because you didn’t choose the 530 flight. It’s a hassle. But typically it’s done at least a few weeks in advance and not a night before thing.

(Written on 07/08/2022)(Permalink)

The FCC did consult with the FAA. There were filings in the FCC docket regarding opinions from the aviation industry. By Boeings own words, that a 220MHz guard band should be enough for RAs. That that the FCC accepted and it turns out the aircraft manufacturers were wrong.

(Written on 06/24/2022)(Permalink)

Hopefully they were smart enough to ensure that some of the parts (and gains) could be reused for a electric prop. With all of GEs knowledge of wind turbines you think some of that would cross over to this and other similar designs.

(Written on 05/27/2022)(Permalink)

To quote a famous commercial “that’s now how this works, that’s not how any of this works!” There is nothing wrong with 5G. The issue is that prior to this particular chuck of radio spectrum being auctioned in 2020, the FCC and FAA did not coordinate sufficiently to ensure there would be no interference. In fact Boeing submitted paperwork to the FCC to say that they thought that they would only need a 20 MHz guard band, which the FCC implemented (it’s why this particular chunk of cell phone spectrum stops at 3.98 GHz instead of going all the way to 4 GHz). You can search google for “Boeing C-Band NPRM reply comments” to read their statement from 2018. From that response: Radio altimeters are already “properly engineered” to resist spurious emissions from external sources. The band pass filters that are incorporated into radio altimeters, however, have limited ability to reject transmissions close to the edges of the 4.2-4.4 GHz band. Boeing goes on to say that they should

(Written on 02/25/2022)(Permalink)

It isn’t all 5G that is the problem. If they were deploying LTE in the C-Band spectrum we would still have the same problem. The FAA says that cell towers are too powerful and might interfere with radio altimeters. It wasn’t a problem before because C-Band originated from satellites 23,000 miles up and needed big dishes to amplify the signal to something usable. The signal was overall weaker. The FAA is going to need to tell the manufacturers of the altimeters to spend the extra few bucks and put better RF filters in so they can block the signals in adjacent bands.

(Written on 12/24/2021)(Permalink)

Nothing. Because it won’t happen. In Japan, KDDI is deploying 5G in the 4.0-4.1ghz band, which is several hundred MHz closer to the altimeter frequencies than what is going live in January in the US. The UK is going to open up 3.8-4.2GHz as well (though not to national operators but to local and regional uses). Canada is also going to open up 3.7-4.0GHz as well. Where is all the hubbub? This is a racket by the FAA to get you (the consumer through higher cell phone bills) to pay for new altimeters for people who can afford them anyways but want a free lunch at your expense. They tried this in the UK too with their mid band 5G and it more or less failed. I love aviation (and technology) but it’s so disappointing and frustrating to see so many people pontificate about the supposed impacts when it seems very clear to me that there are none. If there were legitimate concerns this would be a worldwide issue. But it’s not, it seems localized to the UK and US and it’s be

(Written on 12/10/2021)(Permalink)

The thing that bothers me about this is that it only came up at the (relatively) last minute. Plus there are 40 other countries around the world who use 5G in similar frequencies near radio altimeters and we haven’t heard a peep until now. What I think will happen is that the few models of cheap radio altimeters who have legit problems will be recalled/deemed no longer airworthy and then there will be a fight over who has to pay for replacements. Honestly I think it’s the aviation industry trying to get the communication. Industry to pay for some upgrades. Which is kind of sad. But it’s how things seem to work. Had Biden not taken forever to nominate people to the FCC/NTIA this blow up would have been avoided. (I’m both a aviation nerd and a cell phone nerd so I see both sides of the discussion)

(Written on 11/26/2021)(Permalink)

Sort of correct. The body scanners at the TSA checkpoints use “millimeter wave” spectrum, which is roughly between 30GHz and 300GHz (though sometimes frequencies as low as 12GHz are referred to as millimeter wave). Cell phone carriers have started to use similar millimeter wave spectrum for 5G (not the exact same chunks of spectrum though). However you’ll find it’s only useful in very short distances (only about 500-1000 ft from the tower). Regarding this article it is about C-Band spectrum and it’s not millimeter wave. It’s between 3.7GHz to 4GHz. Source: cell phone nerd, run a website that maps out cell phone spectrum usage.

(Written on 11/12/2021)(Permalink)

Do you know how expensive those are? The starting price for older and smaller ones is several million dollars! 😉 Seriously, you’ll never get one because it’s completely false. If this pandemic had happened before social media you’d have a lot less of these crazies spreading their flat-earther nonsense about how terrible vaccines are, even though they’ve had a bunch of them in their lifetime. 😷⬆️

(Written on 11/12/2021)(Permalink)

Where on earth is $5/gal gas in Denver? Maybe right next to the rental car return. Today at King Soopers it was $3.59.

(Written on 10/29/2021)(Permalink)