Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Czarcasm 1571 days ago
That's not true. I work in aviation and we've had a number of reports of radar altimeter interference during takeoff and landing near airports with the new 5G towers. Older aircraft are particularly effected.
1 comments

Can you share these reports? How does interference exhibit itself?

It seems there a disagreement on factual truth which as another commenter pointed out could be resolved by say a YouTube video showing "here's a radar altimeter malfunctioning near a 5G antennae"

Also your comment seems inconsistent with the fact that the telcos delayed deployment of 5G towers near airports due to concerns about interference during takeoff and landing. So how can there be reports of interference from 5G tower if they haven't even been deployed there (edit: are these international reports)?

(I work on radar, this all feels like lawyers lawyering and techies blogging, but not engineers engineering)

I've also heard these reports from a couple of friends who are commercial pilots. At least one of them filed an ASAP safety report, but I don't know of any way for the public to query that database.

I don't know of any commercial pilot who is going to jeopardize their job and their certificate by filming a YouTube video while landing. There is literally no incentive for them to do so - there's formal channels to report these things (like ASAP, see above).

Also, while turning on the 5G towers near airports was temporarily delayed, it was only a short delay (two weeks). Those towers have already been turned on.

The best news I can find about reports of interference is from this Bloomberg article. As a airline consumer, I’m glad the airline industry is being cautious, but as a radar engineer, I can say there is very, very low SNR to these reports of reports:

https://www.bloombergquint.com/amp/business/pilots-report-ov...

“The reports have come in the form of radioed descriptions to air-traffic controllers as well as through more formal incident-reporting channels. The FAA often gathers unconfirmed reports of aviation incidents, such as drone sightings, even if they’re difficult to verify. At least some of the reports from pilots of possible interference have occurred at locations where the C-band broadcasts don’t exist, suggesting no connection with the service, said two people briefed on the issue.”