Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Fri, 17 May 1991 12:53:56 GMT From: Scott Dorsey Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Use in Aircraft Reply-To: Scott Dorsey Message-ID: Organization: NASA Langley Research Center Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 367, Message 7 of 8 Lines: 21 In article bluemoon!sbrack@cis.ohio-state.edu (Steven S. Brack) writes: > In all seriousness: can a cellphone trigger explosives? It > seems that a radiodetonator would need to be very selective about what > signals trigger it. The problem here isn't radiodetonators, but ordinary blasting caps. Because being near the scene of an explosion is a bad thing, several hundred feet of wire are often run from the detonator to the cap, enough wire to act as a reasonable antenna. It's possible that a local transmitter will get enough current induced in the leads to fire off the cap; I know that nearby 4W 27MHz CB rigs will do it. I rather doubt that anything at significantly higher frequencies and lower power would do any damage, but I do not want to be the one to find out. scott