Remote Keyless Devices
Outages stop, but mystery remains
By Lloyd A. Pritchett
Sun Staff
Military radio emissions could have caused the mass failures.
It ended as suddenly and mysteriously as it began.
The mass failure of keyless remote entry devices on thousands of vehicles in
the Bremerton-Port Orchard area ended abruptly at about 6:30 a.m. Monday — as
federal investigators had nearly isolated the source.
A government official familiar with the investigation by the Federal
Communications Commission said it is "very possible" that the problem could
be related to the military presence in the Bremerton area.
The official, who asked not to be identified, said the abrupt disappearance
of the interference could be related to the investigation.
The outage was believed to be caused by some kind of rogue signal from
electronic communications gear that interfered with the functioning of the
popular keyless remote entries.
The mysterious problem began without warning Wednesday afternoon. That same
afternoon, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was returning home to
Bremerton after seven weeks at sea. Thousands of vehicles were affected, and
the condition persisted throughout the weekend.
But Navy officials continued to insist that the Carl Vinson was not the
source of the problem.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Larry Coffey of the Carl Vinson's public affairs
office said technicians had triple-checked all communications and radar gear
on the ship and could find no shred of evidence that the problem was
originating with the ship.
Car dealerships in the Bremerton-Port Orchard area said the problem was
still continuing as of 6 a.m. Monday, but they noticed it had stopped by 7
a.m.
John Winston, assistant chief of the FCC's enforcement bureau in Washington,
D.C., said his inspectors have been investigating the problem since Friday.
But he declined to discuss the FCC's findings until the probe is complete.
Keyless remote entry devices, which are small enough to fit into a pocket,
typically use a radio signal in the 150- to 500-megahertz range to lock and
unlock a vehicle from a short distance.
Most of the devices operate in the 300-megahertz range, said Sam Lee, a
technician with AutoLoc, a keyless remote device manufacturer.
Military ships and shore facilities use a variety of communications gear
that share those frequencies, but they take steps to ensure that it doesn't
affect electronic consumer devices, officials said.
Solar flares have been ruled out as a cause, said Joe Kunches, a space
weather specialist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
A government official familiar with the FCC investigation said the agency's
field investigators used sophisticated mobile electronic tracking devices to
pinpoint the source of the electromagnetic interference.
They had isolated the interference to one or two possible sources when the
signal abruptly ended Monday morning. The official said it's highly possible
that the sources were military facilities, but refused to be more specific.
The possible sources were contacted, and the FCC received assurances that
there would not be a recurrence of the problem.
Published in The Sun: 03/27/2001
http://www.thesunlink.com/news/2001/march/03271keyless.html
