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From: covert@covert.enet.dec.com (John R. Covert  03-Oct-1990 1104)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Use on Airport Runway
Message-ID: <12997@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 3 Oct 90 15:04:28 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 710, Message 4 of 12


[Moderator's Note: John Covert forwarded this to us.  PAT]

  From: Dale Neiburg
  Organization: National Public Radio, Washington

In TELECOM Digest Vol 10, Issue 666, Marc Kaufman writes:

>In any event, the cabin crew announcement
>these days is exceedingly explicit in disallowing operation of ANY
>radio equipment (transmitters or receivers) at any time.  

The announcements seem to be idiosyncratic to the airlines involved.
Over the last three years, I've flown a lot on America West Airlines
and there's never been any mention of using RF equipment.  (What does
give me a hoot, especially on the Phoenix-Tucson shuttle, is listening
to the detailed instructions on use of the plane's emergency flotation
gear: for those not familiar with southern Arizona, you're hundreds of
miles from any body of water large enough to take a bath in.)

On the thread of inadvertent three-way calling (more or less), we had
a peculiar incident at work a number of years ago.  _How_ it happened
would take a special Digest edition, but:

One Saturday night, a female staff member (NOT at work that evening)
accidentally got her home phone "stuck" in the building paging amp.
Our telecom manager was finally able to clear the problem, but all my
attempts (pick-up, barge-in, etc.) were fruitless.  Of course, a lot
of people were opposed to my _trying_ to correct things....  ;-)

Opinions expressed are my own.  NPR's opinions are made by a bunch of
people upstairs.
 

Dale Neiburg
NPR Engineering
202-822-2402