Navy base may have caused Qantas mishap (Fairfax: The Age )

While you may think this is breaking news I wanted this in this section for the technical minded to review – mods to change if you think fit to do so

Snip
“Australia's aviation safety watchdog is investigating whether interference from a defence communications base caused a Qantas flight to suddenly plunge, injuring 44 passengers and crew.”

Here is the link


Well now, investigators have already discovered the computer took the airplane into a dive. A communications base emits lots of RF only when transmitting. I know that a computer on a plane will be adequately shielded against RF interference. I wounder how much power this base was transmitting to overwhelm a computer particularly one that’s has protection.
Suggestions that the Harold E Holt naval communications station interfered with aircraft onboard systems but at this stage no mention of Pine Gap (Australia’s Area 51) and my bet they won’t.
Anyone know if VLF is discharged into the air or is it only into the sea?

reply to post by majestictwo


Wikipedia VLF

Looks like the article made it to wikipedia as a reference.

Six huge towers putting out 1 Megawatt of VLF RF radiation has to be sending something into the air.

Originally posted by majestictwo
...I know that a computer on a plane will be adequately shielded against RF interference. ...

this is of course assuming that the RF shielding hadn't been damaged, or with QANTAS' current maintenance record if the shielding was there at all

reply to post by BalderAsir


An aircraft metal hull is a shield itself.The only way to get RF out of or into an aircraft is either through the radome (typically the front of the plane) or an antenna.

A few "nose cones", AKA the Madonna collection:
radome
referring page

There are way too many antenna variants to show, but the most likely way to get any low frequency RF into an aircraft would be through the HF antenna, which is generally wire strung from the front of the plane to the tail. Of course, that RF terminates at the HF radio, so it would be hard for it to leak into the flight management system.

I have seen RF get into a industrial computers usually it locks or restarts. In fact a watchdog will force a restart. Don't they run parallel systems on those things anyone know, I’m guessing software.