No Heartbeat - iFly GPS for Android

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iFly GPS for An...

No Heartbeat

6/26/2016 7:43 AM

Cobra

Joined: 4/20/2011

Posts: 2602

Re: No Heartbeat Modified By Cobra on 6/26/2016 7:46:44 AM

jscott wrote:
The down side is that in airplane mode the Android disables the FM radio receiver, so there goes my in-flight entertainment. :o(

That's dumb. FAA/FCC regs only require transmitters to be turned off in flight. Receivers aren't regulated, so that's poor implementation on the part of the OS maker. (I used to have an Android phone with an FM receiver, and it was unaffected by airplane mode, so your mileage may vary by manufacturer and/or OS version.)

Still, in my part of the world, at any reasonable altitude I'm probably in range of three or four stations broadcasting on the same freqs I'd want to tune into, so I don't know how practical FM reception in flight is, anyway.

6/26/2016 11:51 AM

Joined: 1/1/0001

Posts: 0

Re: No Heartbeat Modified By on 6/26/2016 2:07:41 PM

I think he's probably talking about Pandora or some other music transmitted over the internet and received via his cell connection.

Edit: Never mind, he did say FM.

6/26/2016 1:31 PM

John Miller

Joined: 9/12/2010

Posts: 644

Re: No Heartbeat

Jeff:

Best explaination yet!

I will again try the airplane mode on my LG tablet and at the same time monitor the wifi signal via WIFI ANALYZER in my phone.

John M

6/27/2016 8:57 AM

jscott

Joined: 4/24/2012

Posts: 26

Re: No Heartbeat Modified By jscott on 6/27/2016 9:09:32 AM

It is FM station reception. Portable phones & tablets have an FM receiver built into them. The "Next Radio" free app uses the receiver and uses the cord to the earbuds (or in my case the cord to the aux input on my headset) as the antenna.

I found that rather than going into airplane mode, I can go to Other Networks and deselect the cell tower network, so I have WiFi for ADS-B and still have FM radio reception, but the Android doesn't try to do stuff with the cell network, so the WiFi link to the ADS-B unit stays solid.

FWIW, FM reception at altitude is awesome as you can hold a station for several hundred miles. That's my in flight entertainment for long flights. If you have multiple stations on one FM freq, the strongest reception wins. In my part of the world, that isn't much of a problem. But the reception range is so long that you can always scan and find another station to your liking.

Sorry for the thread drift. Back to the WiFi link dropping, which is apparently fixed on mine.

-Jeff Scott