| http://www.thesunlink.com/news/2001/march/0324keylessremot.html
MYSTERY IN BREMERTON Why don't keyless remotes work? 3/34/01 By Lloyd A. Pritchett Sun Staff Something has caused almost all the devices to stop working in Bremerton Joel Maimon of Port Ludlow first noticed the problem when he arrived in Bremerton for work Thursday morning. No matter how many times he clicked the remote keyless entry device for his car, it wouldn't work. He wasn't alone. Art DeCamp, service manager for Haselwood Expo Buick Pontiac dealership in Bremerton, first realized something was amiss Wednesday afternoon when a flood of customers began calling with the same problem. By Thursday, virtually every new car dealership in the Bremerton-Port Orchard area was inundated with hundreds of similar calls from upset customers. The outage also affected unsold new cars sitting on their lots. The cause of the bizarre problem was — and still is — a mystery. No one so far has been able to explain why the remote keyless entry systems on nearly every vehicle in the Bremerton-Port Orchard suddenly stopped functioning at about the same time Wednesday afternoon and hasn't worked since. "It's strange," DeCamp said. "A lot of people are really upset." Speculation about the cause has ranged from solar flares to the Mir space station or possible interference from USS Carl Vinson or some other local Navy ship. But Navy officials say there's no evidence that a naval vessel is causing the problem, and experts say such a localized problem couldn't be caused by solar activity. A spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C., which regulates radio-controlled devices, said the agency will look into the problem if it persists. The malfunction, which seems to afflict all makes and models of new vehicles, disappears as soon as a car is driven outside the area. Although a few vehicles with remote entry seem to be immune to the problem, the vast majority are affected by the outage. Larry Sharrett, general manager of the Parr Auto Group, said all new cars at the group's Bremerton dealerships are affected, whether foreign and domestic. "It's across the board," he said. "I simply have no idea what's causing it." DeCamp said remote keyless entry devices use a radio signal in the 300- to 500-megahertz range. When the "lock" or "unlock" button is pushed on a handheld device, it transmits a signal to a receiver in the car that locks or unlocks the doors. But in the Bremerton area, "something is keeping it from working by not allowing the signal to do what it needs to do," DeCamp said. The problem started at almost exactly the same time the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was returning home to Bremerton from seven weeks at sea, causing service managers at some car dealerships to suspect radio emissions from the ship are somehow to blame. But the ship's communication experts checked the ship over and could find no evidence that it was the source of the problem. "We've checked all of our radars and communication suites and the ship doesn't appear to be emitting any frequencies that might have an effect on these remote control devices," said ship's spokesman Lt. Matt O'Neal. Daphne Burke, spokeswoman for Naval Station Bremerton, said there is no evidence that any Navy ship or shore facility is to blame for the mysterious malfunction. "We've been looking ... but we have no answer," she said. "We're going to continue to check until the problem goes away or until they find something out." Solar flares, which were also suspected as a possible cause, have been ruled out because of the pattern of the outage. Joe Kunches, acting chief of the Space Weather Operations Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said intense solar activity can cause global radio interference. But it wouldn't cause such a localized problem, he said, nor would it persist for more than an hour or two if solar activity was the source, he said. And it definitely wouldn't continue after the sun goes down. John Winston, spokesman for the FCC in Washington, D.C., said the problem could be caused "by any one of a number of things." He said if the problem persists, an agency investigator will be assigned to look into it. Meanwhile, Joel Maimon and thousands of other vehicle owners are relearning how to use their car keys — and wondering how much longer they will have to use them. |
