After the post the last week about the DIY GPS receiver, I decided to get out my RTL-SDR and set it up. Took a couple of days of fiddling around with it, but now I've got SDRtrucking setup. Spent one morning listening to the public safety radio traffic. That was a wild ride on it's own with all sorts of things going on in this metropolitan area.
Thank you so much for posting everything that you did. Long-form details are hard to find. In my truest contribution, I suggest you're a pleasure to work with. Rarely have I seen anyone willing to give the deep-digest of their determination and problems with a function. Consider writing more!
EDIT
I didn't see the other posts about brevity. Fuck that. Details matter and so does the human experience. Who hasn't on this site been the unfortunate recipient of trying to get some brilliant but shitty function to work?
I heard Shoemaker or Levy once talk about the modem on Voyager...running at a blistering 10 bps. I keep our old 2400 bps modem around as a curio. The memories are interesting and fun for me, but I get that they may not be so much for some of the other engineers I work with.
My first modem was 1200 baud! This was back in 1988, I think.
I remember when I upgraded to 9600 in the early 90's. It was an incredible upgrade. I also ran my first SLIP connection on that machine (an Amiga), probably around 1993 or 94.
The 4800bps was directly attached to a computer, no modem. If both were set to 9600, the terminal would miss characters. But most dumb terminals were fast enough to keep up at 9600.
Ha! I've used a high-end GPS to see my location and other fun facts in flight. I learned to keep it in my pocket as despite my attempts to explain it was only a receiver, I was told by the flight attendant to "PUT IT AWAY." Not being one to push back as to be removed for that flight, I did just that.
Streets and Trips was fun on a laptop for long car drives as you could live reroute in the car much like any old app can do these days but seemed somehow magical back then.
FAs can be really strange about that kind of stuff, not just out of ignorance.
My kid liked to suction cup his GoPro to the window to take a time lapse movie of the flight and one FA told him he had to take it off the window because he was, and I quote: "modifying the structure of the aircraft and that's not FAA-approved".
There has been a lot of debate in the aviation maintenance community regarding the legality of attaching gopros etc. to aircraft with suction cups. Someone eventually wrote to the FAA chief counsel and asked.
"Another consideration, in the case of this type of equipment, is the applicability of the term "alteration". FAA Order 8110.3 7E, defines an alteration as "a modification of an aircraft from one sound state to another sound state". The use of suction cups, or other temporary methods of attachment (not including permanent mechanical attachments to the aircraft), would not be considered a modification to the aircraft."
That memo is about attaching it externally. Attaching it to an internal window is probably a non-issue.
I once had a security agent ask me to prove a GoPro was a camera because they didn't understand how there could be no screen or viewfinder. It was most frustrating because this was an area where they would have encountered it many times (lots of scuba divers).
I would guess that the flight attendant is doing their job. They do not have the authority or expertise to risk the airplane based on their own analysis, or based on some random passenger's explanation. The clearly correct solution is to remove the device and then there is no risk to the plane. I expect they are strictly required to respond that way and have no leeway.
Had this happen to me with some duct tape and a malfunctioning strobing light next to me on a red-eye. I'm an aircraft builder but she didn't want to hear my explanation about how TSOs and the FARs work. I just waited until they stopped paying attention.
I believe zoo is short for "zoological garden," but of course it's taken on additional meanings. Still, one occasionally hears the term "zoological and botanical garden."
