News United 93

I don't have real interest in going to the theatre to see it.

A move that i'll probably only rent, I doubt it'll be that good/interestnig...

not only are they backing it I heard thismorning that they all helpend in the production, either by actually helping with the film makeing or just providing recordings of the phone calls and interviews.

I think they used the phone on the airplane.

this to me was like passion of the christ.. peope were sobbing and it was a very emotional movie.. after it was done nobody moved out of their seat.. it was just one of those movies

that was a sweet episode... lets throw a cockpit on the back of a tacoma and drive around

article number #3 claims that the technology didnt exists.
i find it extremely hard to believe that cell phone calls were made from 93's altitude.
i have tried staying on the phone with my gf before. from take-off to 2,500 ft. the call was dropped after that. to me i find it impossible for a call to be made at over 8K ft like the website suggests.

the movie was very good. very intense. the same thing happened, it was all quite after the movie ended.

the transcripts of the phones calls are so strange!?

especially the guy who calls his Mom. He says his first and last name!???

would you address your mom this way?? Seems so weird

true, but noone can claim that the plane was flying low enough for people to make cell calls either.

if the terrorists were looking for the white house most likely they were "cruising" under 10,000ft which is possible to make a cell fone call.

the crash site:



discuss!

hmm...i really wouldnt count on it...
i have a question though...on the planes that crashed on the twin towers: Did any of the other passengers make calls to a landline?
if someone can trace that one down with a link i would appreciate it

As far as celluar phone operation possible at 10K feet or even more - depends on where the plane is located relative to any celluar tower. When we do aerial surveys at 3K, 5K, 10K, 12K feet - cellular phone still worked at all altitudes (as we need to communicate with ground crews or communicate diagnostics) - but not the preferred method (VHF/UHF radios). Connection will sometimes drop out - nothing you can do about that - but being able to do it, not a problem. Being on a commercial plane - you may not be able to test out if a phone works or not - but since we do some much experimental operations, they let us do pretty much anything we want. Bottome line, cell phones do work in the air, even at 10K feet and higher.

personal experience...Cingular...no they dont.

and 747's go to 35K feet...you said you were testing at 3K-12K feet, which an article above says its possible but when you reach over 10K you get dropped calls.

at a really low altitude, they probably can. you are right.

At what altitude? 35K feet - I agree, probably not able to connect. I also have Cingular service when I tested it out - it maybe more of a phone capability limited and tower limitation than actual service limited or celluar technology.

A little cellular tech for everyone (good stuff to know

Note that cell towers do not radiate the signal over 360 degrees - they are "aimed" to best serve an area (cone shaped signal region). Don't think of it "aiming" in a sense of a laser beam (still radio transmission) but the signal overall power drops off very quickly from the intended direction. If the overlap between cell towers is good enough - how they aim the towers is less important. Reason why some people do not get signal in the air - they are directly outside of a reception cone (poor reception) or phone limited (operational band). Most digital phones can connect as far as 10 miles away or more from a tower - doesn't happen normally because of tower "hand-offs" to maximize signal. While your phone is normally only communicating with one tower at a time, there are times when you have to go from one tower to another (travelling). The cell phone makes a low level connection to at least two towers (concurrently with your voice conversation) and together they decide which tower is yielding the best signal. At that point, the the tower you were on will seamlessly hand you off to the next tower to continue your conversation. If this doesn’t happen properly, your call will drop. You could also get "bumped" off - if traffic is heavy and bandwidth is limited. Planes travel much too fast for this "hand-off" to happen properly - also leading to dropped calls in the air. Some phone have better discrimination than others and can connect where others have problems.