Commercial or Private? (Score 1)

On the Issue of RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) and the instrumentation, I have a hard time believing that the instrumentation could be that sensitive to stray RFI. Think about this a minute, the electronic devices are usually required to meet some specific consumer RFI standards. Equipment on an aircraft are required to meet much more stringent requirements on shielding and interference protection. It's not like we are looking at EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) levels of interference here.

OTOH, one of the reasons I got my license was to take care of my own flying. Yes, I know that it is statistically safer to fly in a commercial airliner than in the Experimental Aircraft I am building, but I feel a lot better when I have the stick in my own hand. Besides my airplane will be better looking :-)

Additionally, a fairly quick experimental will get you from point A to point B often quicker than the much faster commercial airliner. Last year one of our experimental club members flew nonstop from the Denver area to the Tampa area in under seven hours. Cost less and point to point time is about the same since he could start closer to home, avoid airport security lag, and land exactly here he was planning to visit.

The airliners worry me in several ways but I think the idea that they are blaiming cockpit glitches on electronic devices may worry me more. This is not black magic and I know intermitent problems are harder to debug but with the numbers of aircraft flying a reasonable set of symptoms shoud begin to appear and be classifiable. Even factoring in the non-linear aspects of this kind of trouble shooting, we should get something a lot better than vague mutterings about electronics in the cabin.