The iPhone and the significance of 101.4

Question

ok curiousity has gotten the better of me. I have had an iPhone since the release day. Every night I put it on my nightstand to charge because I use it as an alarm for one thing, and I dont want to miss calls as Im a very heavy sleeper and we all know its ringer isnt the loudest thing in the world.
Anyway.
I have a digital clock on the same nightstand. It has a radio on it. Every single time I put the iPhone next to this digital clock the numbers on the clock freak out, and then end like a slot machine on 101.4 - keep in mind that the clock is in clock mode and not radio mode, yet it goes to 101.4 all the time.
Curious, I went to another digital clock in my house. 101.4.
Any thoughts on this?
ps - the radio is NOT set to 101.4, so its not just switching views from clock to radio mode

Answer 1

Ya there have been MANY discussions on cell phones and wi-fi in flight. As a former aircraft radio tech I can assure you that there is little chance of a cell-phone, even in the cockpit effecting the radio gear.
During repair of aircraft gear one of our tests was to subject it to various forms of high power RF to make sure there would be no issues. For example comm gear. We would tune it to various frequencies, attach the output to a signal analyzer then hit it with a radar blast and see what happened. We were allowed a certain amount of interference but at no time could the signal be lost.
The reason for this was the much comm/nav gear resides in the nose on corporate A/C and most of these aircraft have weather radar. If your nav/comm died whenever your Wx radar tried to paint you'd be in big trouble.
Our shop carried it further. We used cell-phones when they first came out, radar guns, hand held amateur radios. All in the 1-10 watt range to insure our repaired radios didn't freak.
One of the real reasons for not allowing cell while in flight is the fact that you are now basically a 40,000 foot antenna. Your cell phone would light up towers across 3 states or more! Imagine if everyone did that!?
Then there is the liability. If you were using your cell and the A/C crashed and it appeared to be a navigational error... Imagine the heyday the lawyers would have!