Here's a reminder to always keep your cell phone on when flying. Right now Montana Aeronautics is looking for a missing plane in the Miles City area. Radar coverage was lost not too far from Miles City. However Aeronautics has been able to track the cell phone and the phone has been stationary for over 12 hours now. Working with Verizon they have narrowed down the search area because of the coverage of the cell tower.

Good to know. I hope everyone is ok!

I assume that the GPS function was enabled as well, for those of us with that capability.

So are they going to find him at his girlfriends house I hope, better than finding him in wreckage

Doesn't need any GPS. Just needs to be on.

Just call TSA or DHS and say "My friend Sheikh Mohammed bin Achmed al Jihad al Falafel was trying to take flying lessons as quickly as possible... and we would like to tell him that his order for 75 new cell phones and a spool of wire is ready for pickup. Can you call him at this number???"

They'll zero in on the phone in no time, and it will have nothing to do with cell towers. They may even provide some complimentary good samaritan aerial search coverage, thanks to some of our airborne "assets"

Kidding aside, I hope the aircraft and its occupants are all OK. Safe return to all.

N131CP wrote:Doesn't need any GPS. Just needs to be on.

In newer phones, the device can be interrogated to respond with a GPS location string. 911 operators can extract the exact location simply by interrogating the device that made the call. However, I'm not sure if it can be done to a phone that is in a standby state, i.e. not making an active call.

In this case it sounds like they are doing simple triangulation based upon tower pings, but conventional technology does allow this.

not good http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-a ... 03286.html