Burnt Offering
Veteran
Location: Winter Wonder Land, Wasilla Alaska
| Hey Jason, I totally hear what you are saying about the cell phone interference. I first heard about that about 3 years ago whe I was using my heli. Anyway, so I ran my own independent tests here at the Alaska Skunkworks. I would fire up the electronics on my heli turn on my TX, and then use my home phone to call my cell phone. I tried EVERYTHING and the only time I could get any reaction at all was if I held the phone litterally touching the RX on my heli. I would get a tiny bit of servo jitter when the phone was ringing. If I pulled it away 2 inches it would stop. It was enough of a reaction to make me think, hmmmmm, I will just take off my cell phone when I fly. Well over the last 3 years I have changed my thinking and here's why. With the sheer volume of cell phones in this country, there is virtually no way that I can protect myself from every possible cell phone that rings. I started leaving my phone in my car when I flew. Which if you think about it makes no sense at all as I would get done flying, go back to my car and have 3 messages on my phone. Which means at any given time my plane was probably CLOSER to the phone when I was flying and was more than likely ringing when I was flying directly over my car. Also, when I am flying in a populated area, what am I going to do, pull out my bull horn and make a blanket announcment to everyone within a mile of my plane to shut off their cell phones? Now I only take off my cell phone just so I'm not distracted byt the stupid thing ringing, and sometimes I just plain forget to leave it in the car. I am no longer worried about MY cell phone as much as the sheer volume of phones that I'm flying over. Good grief their are probably 20 cell phones ringing at the same time while I'm doing a shoot all that are closer to the plane than I am. So in a nutshell, I no longer worry about it. And if I ever need to do a flight again where I need to talk to my camera man long distace, I will use my cell phone. |
(visible in photo number 7 in the link above). The knife must be 30 yrs old, borrowed from my parents. If you buy one of those 'tools' it'll come in handy slicing meat too. 
