[ale] OT: Smoke Particles

[Jeff Layton]

John Mills wrote:

>Chris -
>
>On 12 Jul 2004, Chris Fowler wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Is there any evidence that smoke particles from cigs can cause issues
>>with electronics?
>>    
>>
>
>Sure - used to be a chronic problem with commercial aircraft. That said, I 
>believe the most sensitive computer components (i.e., disk drives) are 
>protected by filters.
>

I don't know about smoke particles "hurting" aircraft but I do know an
interesting story about smoking in aircraft. Maintenance people used
to like people to smoke in aircraft because they could look for cracks
in the fuselage by looking for the nicatine trails. When smoking was
banned on virtually all flights the maintenance people started screaming
and were yelling about increased costs for inspections. I always had
this image of some hard core smokers sitting in a pressurized aicrcraft
on the ground, smoking their brains out to make lots of smoke trails
to look for cracks =:)

Jeff

>DISCLAIMER - I have no documented information on this - the aircraft issue
>is hearsay and the disk-drive part from manufacturers' literature of years
>gone by - back when you actually paid real money for disk drives.
>  
>


-- 
Dr. Jeff Layton
Aerodynamics and CFD
Lockheed-Martin Aeronautical Company - Marietta