| As an aside, no one with the slightest bit of technical competence | would have anticipated interference to R/C from CB or cell | phones. Certainly not on the 72 MHz band.
That is incorrect, for at least two reasons :
1) R/C does use the 27 mhz band, even today. So does CB. I believe channel 6 is shared with one of the CB channels, but even the other five channels are very close to the CB channels and could be affected by a CBer close by -- especially if he's (illegally) using more than 4 watts. Also, some CBers transmit slightly outside of the CB band (freebanders) -- including directly on the frequencies used by R/C. Yes, it's illegal, but it happens.
(Of course, you're concentrating on the 72 mhz band, but remember that it's not the only R/C band.)
2) Cell phones usually use bands far removed from the 72 mhz band we normally use, so they're normally not a big problem. But even so, a cell phone tower
*could* certainly interfere with your plane -- either via intermod, or by desensitizing your receiver to the point where it can't hear your transmitter anymore. Fortunately, this is only likely when your plane is much closer to the cell phone tower than your transmitter.
Of course, a pager tower that's using the 72 mhz band is a much larger concern than a cell phone tower at 800 (or more) mhz -- but even so, the cell phone tower may be a problem under certain conditions.
None of this is rocket science -- this stuff has been understood for decades, and certainly people considered it long before the 72 mhz band was allocated to R/C.
As for BPL, it's a disaster for ham radio (at least DXing) and shortwave listening -- that's well understood. For us, the problem is a lot more vague.
We don't normally deal with the extremely weak signals that hams do -- our receivers aren't actually that good at picking up weak signals. As long as our transmitter's signal is a good deal stronger than the signal received from other sources (including BPL) we're usually good. As I understand it, the signal generated by BPL isn't going to be that strong -- yes, stonger than a guy in Europe transmitting with 100 watts, but not as strong as your 1 watt transmitter only a few hundred feet away. Hopefully, BPL won't do anything more than reduce our effective range by a small amount, and create some `don't fly there' zones around power lines. But certainly, the AMA should try and quantify the danger more carefully, and join the ARRL in fighting against BPL. BPL is likely to be a problem for us, but it's not certain how large the problem will be.
As for interfering with GPS (as another poster suggested), GPS uses signals around 1200, 1600 and 2200 mhz. These are so far removed from the 2-80 mhz signals that BPL creates that they should be safe except under some extreme conditions, like being 10 feet away from a power or something (and if your plane is is that close, you've got bigger problems than a useless GPS.) I'd be much more concerned about intereference with the 118 - 134 mhz air band.