On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:15:54 -0800, in
.com, Marco Leon wrote:

snip

Although they are not that bad of a show to watch sometimes, I've noticed
some of their experiments that were not exactly right... They did one on
exiting a car underwater recently... Their experiments methods came to the
conclusion that it was not possible to roll the window down on a car once
it was submerged due to the pressure on the window... To simulate this,
they put some weights on the window of a car door held in a horizontal
position... If you look closely at it, it seems pretty obvious that the
weights window was cracking open up to the point where the weights started
hitting the bottom edge of the window... I suspect that the results
from water pressure being distributed across the face of the window
would not act the same... At the very least, even the small amount that
the window would open would allow the water to enter the vehicle quicker
and as such equalize pressure quicker and thus allow you to open the door
quicker...

With regards to the cell phone usage aboard an aircraft, they also said
that they were prevented from doing it in the air because FAA rules made
it illegal... In fact, it is FCC rules and it is because of concerns of
the phones contacting multiple cell phone towers at the same time... The
way I understand it, the FAA rules concern airliners, so with regards to
that, they could have made the test on a VFR flight without any FAA
consequences...

Now, this doesn't address the issue of whether you can even get a cell
phone signal while in the air... My experience with Verizon is that above
about 500 ft or so, if a signal is available, it doesn't last long enough
for me to make a call... On the other hand, the old analog cell phones
would work at 10K ft... Of course, this was back in the old bag phone days
with a real handset, so you had to cut the engine back to idle slow down
as much as possible to reduce the engine and wind noise so that you could
actually hear what was said on the phone... Let's just say that it was not
conducive towards long conversations...