This subject came up around the campfire when camped out at Powers last weekend.

"If I were to take my ipad or phone off of game mode, above 10K ft of course, would Foreflight or my GPS watch get a signal"?

We "suspect" it wouldn't, but foreflight seems to work in the cockpit as many airline pilots use it, I think??

Anyway, is there something that blocks the gps signal in the main cabin but not the cockpit, or??

Wondering if any Airline pilots could shed some light on how this works........

I have a buddy who experienced perfect GPS signal on his iPad while sitting in a window seat of a 737 at FL340. I suspect it's just the fuselage that causes interruption of the weak GPS signal.

The GPS will work fine... its just the airlines and FAA saying that you cant operate anything that sends or receives a signal including GPS.. How the hell can a hand head GPS possibly screw up the aircraft systems or navigation??

I have also seen a buddies flight track while on board a smoker at 34K+ and it shows the track just fine. I have seen videos on youtube as well of GPS tracks on smokers at altitude.

It is legal to use your GPS at any time on an airliner. That rule changed several months ago. I have found that my phone(Galaxy S4) works better than the tablet. The phone gets the signal within 5-10 seconds, the tablets can take over a minute. The tablets larger size works against you here. I have Garmin Pilot on my phone.

I use my Bad Elf GPS hooked up to my iPad on a flight from Denver to Seattle worked great until I showed it to one of the flight attendants. She said I couldn't use GPS on the airplane, I guess little do they know there's probably 90-100 phones and other devices on the airplane sucking up GPS signals. It didn't work well at all without the Bad Elf. That Bad Elf sucks up battery storage like crazy though.

I've used my GPS, Garmins and Ipads/Iphone on planes for years. Never had a problem getting a signal. I place it right on the tray table near the window in plain sight and never had anyone ask me not to use it.
Pete

+1 - works fine near a window - not so much in the center of the plane

Works great 85-90% of the time when I have a window seat. 40% or less further inside the plane.

I've had two FAs ask me what I was using for software (ForeFlight). Neither had an issue, one asked me if I liked it as he was trying to decide what to get.

I haven't had the experience another poster did where tablets take longer. My iphone is about the same as my ipad. Both are usually surprisingly quick, occasionally take a couple minutes and rarely won't connect at all. So I suspect it's more to do with how far I am from the last time the device knew its location and how many satellites it can see. At least in the apple world, those seem to be the variables.

There was once upon a time a big-picture constitutional law that you had the right ro receive any broadcast signal, as a basic right of citizenship. I think it may have been the Federal Communications Act of 19XX or something like that. The point is that it would have been one of your more significant rights that they were screwing with.

Now the FAA could have made a case to suspend that law while in an airliner, but they would have had to show genuine proof that it could and would affect air navigation and safety. Because it is fairly obvious that simply receiving an RF signal that is already surrounding and bouncing off the fuselage of an airliner could not do any more harm than the presence of that signal, I think that the FAA would have had a tough time proving that, especially weighed against a primary level right of citizenship.

Of course, in reality, if you wanted to challenge the FAA on this it would have required some sort of citizen's rights group, ACLU, or some other organization with a checkbook and attorneys, to sponsor the whole circus. It wouldn't have been something that could have been resolved in one episode of "The People's Court".

I'm glad they changed that rule if they did.

highroad wrote:This subject came up around the campfire when camped out at Powers last weekend.

"If I were to take my ipad or phone off of game mode, above 10K ft of course, would Foreflight or my GPS watch get a signal"?

We "suspect" it wouldn't, but foreflight seems to work in the cockpit as many airline pilots use it, I think??

Anyway, is there something that blocks the gps signal in the main cabin but not the cockpit, or??

Wondering if any Airline pilots could shed some light on how this works........

Yeah thanks for asking the question. I was sitting in either the isle or middle seat when it was spotty for me at low altitudes and non existent at high altitudes.

Bonanza Man wrote:It is legal to use your GPS at any time on an airliner. That rule changed several months ago. I have found that my phone(Galaxy S4) works better than the tablet. The phone gets the signal within 5-10 seconds, the tablets can take over a minute. The tablets larger size works against you here. I have Garmin Pilot on my phone.

yes and no. It is still up to the air carrier. As of last week, the preflight briefing on the 737 to work was very clear and they included GPS in the briefing as NOT allowed. The FAA has changed its stance on it and left it up to the individual air carriers. So as long as it is not mentioned in the preflight safety brief, then yes, you can use your GPS on a smoker.

So, the next question is: How about using your SPOT while in an airliner? That way if it does go down or disappear over the ocean at least those of us on BCP will know where the plane is!

Worked for me last time I flew back from Florida:

Our airline issued iPads have only Jeppesen charts and our operating manuals on it as per FAA approval.

I did however load ForeFlight on it and link it to my Stratus ADS-B which is stellar.

The biggest difference is that in the cockpit we have a wide selection of GPS satellites available due to the plexiglass, whereas in the cabin you will be more limited due to the aluminum fuselage which will block the signal.

One might have better luck in the composite fuselage of the 787.

I've found that if I have my foreflight on (iPhone) it usually keeps signal pretty well. But that if I have it all off and go to fire it up in-flight on an airliner I find it takes ten years (if it ever finds itself. I usually get bored and turn it back off).

I haven't flown commercial with our iPad yet. My wife usually claims it for book reading

Two different questions here:

1. Will it work? The short answer is, yes, it works quite well in some parts of the airplane. In others - near the galleys, lavs, etc. - not so much.

2. Is it legal? Not SHOULD it be legal, but IS IT legal? Most carriers will tell you you are not allowed to use a GPS device on board the aircraft once the boarding door is closed. That means for the entire flight.

The change that someone alluded to earlier wasn't for GPS devices, it was for having your phones and tablets in "Airplane Mode" from boarding door closed to 10,000ft and again on the descent from 10,000ft to landing, as opposed to having the device completely powered down during those times.

There's another question, too - Who cares what the policy or rule is? Why are the airlines interfering with my God-given/constitutional/humanitarian right to operate my personal electronics when I damn well want to??

I think my approach to this is simply: As good and conscientious pilots, we all put a lot of time into Risk Mitigation. We fly into hot/high airports early in the morning or later in the evening. We do a good landing area survey when we're flying into unfamiliar lakes and rivers in a floatplane, or get a thorough checkout from a pilot that has a lot of experience flying into that one-way strip with no go around at the end of the canyon. We think about contingencies before and during the flight so we're ready if the unthinkable happens. We let people know where we're going, file flight plans on the longer trips and carry PLB's and Spots and Survival Vests and gear. We continue flying our taildraggers until they're parked and tied down.

None of us would ever let a passenger on our planes make decisions for us that COULD have a direct impact on the safety of our flight, right? Especially if the potential consequences of that passenger's actions were unpredictable or hard to quantify. The airlines tend to be very conservative when it comes to this kind of thing. It is easier to prohibit something that is difficult to quantify from a safety or risk mitigation perspective than it is to spend millions of dollars testing every device out there in every seat of every type of airplane in the fleet under normal operating conditions. And redo those tests every time new devices come out. It just isn't going to happen.

As a 21-year airline pilot, the last thing I want to deal with is the possibility of something screwing up my navigation when I'm doing a CAT III ILS in 300 ft visibility, or the RNAV RNP GPS approach in serious terrain. The margins on those maneuvers are already thin enough for me - and nobody like surprises in their airplane when they're already "threading the needle."

I won't "experiment" with ways to possibly screw up your airplane when I'm flying as your passenger. Please don't do it when you're flying as my passenger, either!


P.S. ...and YES - I've been a victim of electronic interference in cruise flight at FL350. After a 15 degree uncommanded turn (our compasses on the EFIS nav displays slewed back and forth a couple of times), we tracked it down to one of the old brick laptops being used with a corded mouse - like having a transmitting antenna moving around in your airplane!

CapnMike wrote:

P.S. ...and YES - I've been a victim of electronic interference in cruise flight at FL350. After a 15 degree uncommanded turn (our compasses on the EFIS nav displays slewed back and forth a couple of times), we tracked it down to one of the old brick laptops being used with a corded mouse - like having a transmitting antenna moving around in your airplane!

Oops, didn't know that was actually possible!

I'll keep it in airplane mode!

My company has also gone to iPads and Jeppson. Reception in the cockpit is spotty. Much better with a Bad Elf I have been told.m I've been told that the heated windows are partially to blame. Given the amount of electrical wiring surrounding me, I'm not surprised that there is interference. However, when it is next to the side window, where our mounts will be, it gets pretty good reception. With the Jeppseon software having the geo referenced enroute and taxi charts, it works great. Obviously Foreflight does as well. Couple that with broad band satellite internet access and its a very useful tool. No restrictions on GPS use on our iPads.

My LG G2 phone with aviation GPS program works on Southwest airliner .

Cool, if not told otherwise I will try this on my flight out of SFO over the big pond since I will be on one of those fancy 787's.