EDACS @ 35,000 feet?

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OttawaBob

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Just a "high level comment" that I was impressed by the City of Ottawa EDACS system as I flew out of Montreal heading to Newark the other day. I was listening to air comms after take off and then to my surprise, I picked up communications on the City's EDACS system full strength for about 10 minutes while reaching 35,000 feet on a System I hadn't intended to listen to.
Should I be impressed or is this "normal" by radio standards in the 800 MHz realm?

Either way it was a bit unusual for me.
 

WPXS472

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I'd say it is pretty normal. Radio waves travel long distances line of sight. I have heard private aircraft hundreds of miles away on the 440 MHz Ham band.
 

moonbounce

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I'd say it is pretty normal. Radio waves travel long distances line of sight. I have heard private aircraft hundreds of miles away on the 440 MHz Ham band.

Being as he is in the aircraft at 35000 ft listening to signals from ground stations without an outside antenna, I would be surprised. I would think that the aircraft would act like a faraday cage, no signals in and no signals out.
 

WPXS472

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800 Mhz will pass through the window of a commercial aircraft pretty well. Even if there was attenuation, the signal was probably pretty strong st that altitude.
 

gary123

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We have a saying in the industry. " Height is Might" . This is why airband freq are very wide spread before being reused. Even then items like runway directions handoff freq etc are researched before a freq is duplicated.
 
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