Bag's Rants

Less of a concern than they think.

One of the things I do like about living at this time is the amount of new technology and ideas that are being bandied about. OK, I'm not as happy when a super new microwave system is converted into a crowd control device but such is the price of progress.

I was looking at this article on a fly by wireless system they have installed in a test plane and are looking at installing in passenger planes in the future. Read more here.

Now one of the concerns raised is that it would be easy for some bad guys, terrorists are not mentioned here, to jam the links which would clearly be bad. The author wouldn't be happy flying in one of these for a while.

The jamming problem raises one of the issues I always have with journalists. Why do they always have to raise negatives in every article? The issue which leads to the development is that more and more is being crammed in and space for wires is short and installation difficult. So they automatically go from hundreds of wires to none. Even if the scientists manage to sort out anti jamming the aeronautical engineers would still would be concerned because, well the list is long but for one thing there are natural issues which cause interference. Of course our brainboxes in the development areas and in the aerospace companies wouldn't want to roll this out as fully wireless when they can put in much safer tried and tested systems. A middle of the way path which even our author would be happy with would be to hard wire in the critical components. Links to engine, ailerons, rudder etc. and have the wireless handle the critical tasks like the pilots cup of tea button and the TV controls. Thus the wiring would be limited in scope and any issues with the wireless connection would have the biggest impact on the complaint department because the service would drop.

Anything that reduces costs both setup and running must be good for everybody. I bet bluejackers will have some fun with the first few systems out.

posted by Bag @ 4:30 pm