Dear Forum Members, Keith Armstrong brought this subject up a little over a year ago and stirred up a hornet's nest of a response. I saved many of the postings because I thought they were quite valuable.
Last time Mr. Armstrong made some rather wild claims I thought were technically unjustified and I said so, and so did a host of others. This time he seems to be saying that if the function of an equipment is critical, then its immunity should be controlled so that its functionality can be relied on under reasonable operating conditions. I find this assertion difficult to argue against. Mr. Armstrong did resurrect one red herring, which is a bad thing to do with year old fish. Cell phone operation is prohibited on aircraft in flight because they are intercepted by multiple towers which confuses the system, not because of flight safety concerns. Also, one astute forum member pointed out last year that airlines would stand to lose significant income >from their air phones if cell phones were used instead! Seriously, the assertion that cell phone transmissions would cause flight or engine control degradation in a modern aircraft is irresponsible. Flight critical avionics are qualified to levels way in excess of cell phone radiated fields. And the cell band is not in band to aircraft COMM/NAV radios - forum members please jump in and correct me if I am out-of-date here. I am thinking of VHF-AM, UHF COMM, VOR/ILS/glideslope, DME, ADF, GPS. Maybe I am missing something that overlaps the cell band, but I don't think so. I think it is the tenor of Mr. Armstrong's article that is off-putting, rather than the substance. He holds out the prospect of ruinous lawsuits as a punishment for not foreseeing every possible application/misapplication of a given product. I know, from previous communication, he would state that this is the world we live in, so deal with it. But I think that accepting and adopting this mindset is collaboration with a force aligned against a technological civilization - a mindset that demands not only foolproof but damn-foolproof products, and the measure of success or failure in this regards is whether or not a fool and a product come together. In other words, if someone misuses a product, then that is prima facie evidence that inadequate protections were built into the product. I will now repeat what I have said before along these lines: "Genius has its limits, but ignorance has none." Sincerely, Ken Javor on 2/10/03 1:26 PM, drcuthbert at [email protected] wrote: > > An interesting article in the January issue of EMC Compliance Journal > EMC-Related Functional Safety > http://www.compliance-club.com/article.php?sid=119&mode=&order=0 > > Dave Cuthbert > > ------------------------------------------- > This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety > Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. > > Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ > > To cancel your subscription, send mail to: > [email protected] > with the single line: > unsubscribe emc-pstc > > For help, send mail to the list administrators: > Ron Pickard: [email protected] > Dave Heald: [email protected] > > For policy questions, send mail to: > Richard Nute: [email protected] > Jim Bacher: [email protected] > > Archive is being moved, we will announce when it is back on-line. > All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: > http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc > -- Ken Javor EMC Compliance Huntsville, Alabama 256/650-5261 This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: [email protected] with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: [email protected] Dave Heald: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] Archive is being moved, we will announce when it is back on-line. All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
