Plwan to disable terrorists graage doors, keep em home.

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Military Signal Blocks Garage Remotes
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QUANTICO, Va. (AP) -- For many suburbanites, life without garage door openers is unimaginable.

But neighbors of the Marine base here have been reduced to just that after a strong radio signal coming from the facility began neutralizing remote-control openers.

Residents have had to spend hundreds of dollars on new systems.

"I feel there should be some kind of compensation," said Queen Carroll, who is in her early 70s and was forced to buy a new receiver and remote. "I am a struggling widow, if you will, and I praise the Lord I'm still here, but I am on a budget. When things like this come up totally unexpected, it is very upsetting."

Repair shops started getting a flurry of calls when the base began using the frequency in late December.

Last fall, residents around an Air Force facility in Colorado Springs saw their garage-door remotes stop working when the 21st Space Wing began testing a frequency for use during homeland security emergencies or threats. Two years ago, testing of a similar system in Fort Detrick in Maryland resulted in similar problems.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CONFLICTING_SIGNALS?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US
 
This is a really old story. The newer garage doors don't have that problem. This one keeps circulating around every few years or so, this is the third time that I read this story.

In a related note, when I moved in at another house nearby to a Naval Reserve Base (yes there is one near Denver, they do mostly flights there) I installed a radio three-way switch rather than drag wire through the walls to install a real one. Well, the normal setting on that happened to be on a frequency with the IFF of the Naval flights.

We would be sleeping peacefully and suddenly our bathroom light would turn on. I'd get up and turn it off and about a minute later it would happen again.

It actually took me a bit before I realized the problem and changed the frequency. Mostly because some of the reservist pilots didn't use the IFF as they were supposed to so they'd pass over without the seemingly supernatural happenstance....

Anyway to show how old the story is, follow this link from 1998...

http://starbulletin.com/98/07/31/news/story10.html

Another one from 1999:

# Residents in Hobart Tasmania trapped in their garages when radar on aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson affected garage door remote controllers.

"Hobart in Tasmania suffered an unusual blight earlier this month. Residents all over town found themselves trapped in their garages when the remote controls that operate the garage doors suddenly failed to function. Roll-a-door companies were flooded with calls from angry garage owners and were at first completely nonplussed by the problem. Then the explanation emerged: the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson had just cruised majestically into the town’s docks, equipped with navigational radar employing the same frequency as the remote controls for the town’s garage doors. According to the local newspaper The Advocate, an apologetic Lieutenant Dave Waterman, the ship’s public affairs officer, said that the problem would only occur when the ship was arriving and leaving." (New Scientist, 24th April 1999, page 100)

link: http://www.antony-anderson.com/cruise/rfi.html
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