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Air Force Jams Garage Doors
SonicSpike points us to a Chicago Tribune article reporting that in Colorado the Air Force is jamming garage doors. In a joint U.S.-Canadian operation, they were testing communications on a frequency that would be used by first responders in the event of a threat to homeland security. From the article: "But the frequency also controls an estimated 50 million garage door openers, and hundreds of residents in the area found that theirs had suddenly stopped working... Technically, the Air Force has the right to the frequency, which it began using nearly three years ago at some bases. Signals have previously interfered with garage doors near bases in Florida, Maryland, and Pennsylvania."
This happened to me on Maple Street. Caused quite a stir and a few people wound up shot in the action ... course they were commies so no harm done.
the problem here is that those garage doors openers are unlicensed transmitters using a band they wouldn't be allowed to use if it wasn't for the "low power" exceptions. if they'd put their transmitters on a public band or gotten a license, they wouldn't have this problem
They shouldn't have made their openers to operate on this frequency, in the first place. It's no secret which frequencies are allocated to the US gov't. It's laziness on the part of the company.
TFA was short on details. This article http://www.krdotv.com/story.cfm?nav=news&storyID=1 613 says disruptions were affecting devices in the 390 MHz spectrum range.
According to the US Department of Commerce, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf, the 335.4 to 399.9 MHz band is licensed exclusively to the government.
Sorry for the lack of HTML skills.
The FCC will give you a free pass if you're below some maximum power, which brings us to this tidbit from TFA: Holly Strack, who lives near the entrance to the facility, said friends in the neighborhood all had the same problem. "I never thought my garage door was a threat to national security," she said.
Don't worry hon, your garage door opener isn't a threat, unless you're somehow violating FCC regulations.
And this genius: David McGuire, whose Overhead Door Co. received more than 400 calls for help, said
If by "sign of the times" you mean "the military is getting around to testing systems that should have been up and running years ago".
Why does this article try to inject so much fear into what is a relatively straight forward issue?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Just a casual thought; But could someone on the Air Force staff flip the their garage door switch every time UCLA scores against USC so that the garage doors open up in a nation wide "wave"?
Its not that at all. When they purchased those devices, they were licences under Part 15. Which states, A. the device must accept harmfull interferance B. the device cannot emmit any harmfull interference. They are a secondary user of those frequencies, and funciton is not garanteed on those frequencies for those devices by the FCC. Its like when my ham radio equipment interfears with the naibors baby monitor. The first problem is i'm not even using the frequency it uses, just one close to it, and the poor design and construction of the device comes into play. Second of all, I fall under part 97 rules, which allows me to generate some levels of interference, so long as it is 120db down from my primart transmitting frequency, i'm legal.
This has nothing to do with rights, there never were any rights to those frequencies for the public, they were never anything more than a secondary user.
Ah yes - the immediate assumption that the citizens are in the right, and the goverment in the wrong. Only in this case, that assumption is wrong.
Garage door openers are what are called class 'B' devices - devices that transmit using extremely low power and are unlicensed and unregulated. Because they are extremely low power, they can pretty much use any band they want. In exchange for this freedom from licensing and regulation however, theres a catch - owners of class 'B' devices may not interfere with legal and/or licensed users of the band in question, and must accept any interference from said legal and/or licensed users of the band in question. This is usually spelled out in tiny, tiny print in the users manual.
That being said - you'd be surprised how much class 'B' (sometimes called 'part 15') devices you have in your house. I bet if you check the manuals for your computer (or motherboard), your stereo, your TV, any radios, etc... I bet they all carry the appropriate disclaimers.
For real. And judging by the 'omg teh gov't is teh evilz' posts here, it is working quite well.
I thought it was funny, but apparently it is a political issue to some, obviously the American Government are evil fascists for this human rights outrage.
For a few hours on one random day I was faced with the decision of whether to shut my garage door manually or wait until the test was completed...that's it, the terrorists have won.
So the test was a total success. Because it proved, in undeniable public, that in the event of an emergency, the first responders around essential Air Force bases would be getting jammed by people opening their garage doors.
Yeah, a system operating out of Cheyenne mountain with an antenna on the peak and a range of miles is going to be affected by a bunch of milliwatt transmitters with an effective range of about 100 feet. Time for you to go back to Radio Theory 101.
These tests are important. That's why I was stunned when I realized (3 years later) that on September 11, 2001, I didn't hear a single transmission of the Emergency Broadcast System. If ever there were an emergency during my lifetime that the public needed broadcasts to know what what was happening and what to do, it was multiple aerial bombings of NYC and the Pentagon. But there was nothing.
Though we'd all been taught since childhood to be always at least a little bit subconsciously afraid, but trusting the government had a system to handle even the ultimate emergency: nuclear war. And endured countless nerve-rattling drills, usually interrupting the most otherwise "relaxing" TV and radio (PBS, mostly).
The Emergency Broadcast System was retired in 1994. The current system is teh Emergency Alert System. This name more accurately describes its purpose. It's not meant to be a news channel. On 9-11 we had plenty of those already. The purpose of the EBS is to inform people that they may need to take action, and take it quickly. Things like wildfires, flash floods, or tsunamis--- those are what you use the EBS for. Since the appropriate action in the aftermath of a plane hitting a building is to essentially stay calm, stay put, and let emergency crews do their job, the EBS was not needed. I've heard the EBS used for real locally. The message is usually terse, prerecorded, and informative only in a very limited way, briefly outlining the danger, its location, and what to do. You know, something along the lines of "Flash flood warning for the eastern county, stay out of the lower canyons area, highways A, B, and C are closed". This weird fantasy you have in your head where Walter Cronkite is supposed to come on the air over EBS and give us the low-down on what's up is laughable in the extreme.
I guess those weren't "tests" at all. They were the real thing: steady fear/trust propaganda.
Yeah, OK. I don't trust the government either, but I haven't let paranoia turn me into a freak about it. The EAS works fine. You just don't know what it's for. You've apparently formulated an expectation based not upon the stated purpose of the system, but upon armchair speculation after having the EAS/EBS tone interrupt your viewing of National Geographic Explorer a few too many times.
Never really expected to do anything in any kind of emergency, even survivable ones like 9/11/2001. Because they all delivered the desired result.
I'd still love to hear what you think the EAS should have broadcast on 9-11.
So maybe these Air Force tests are really failures. Because instead of keeping people irrationally afraid, yet trusting the government, they've actually woken people up.
Yeah.... sure. You know conspiracy nuts like you are all the same. You're all secretly (or not secretly!) obsessive/compulsive control freaks. You all believe there's some sort of sinister puppet master behind the scenes, twisting the government to their will. You can't bear to consider the real truth, that for the most part the bad things that happen are completely unpredictable and mostly unavoidable. Stupid things the government does or fails to do are not part of some grand plan by a criminal mastermind, but simply a byproduct of the sheer size of government. Its very size creates an incredible amount of inertia, and when it does manage to move, it's either too much or too little, and often in the wrong direction. In short nobody is in contr
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You can get a logic board for most newer Chamberlain openers that works on the 420MHz frequency. When I was working there, we had the ability to send one out for free at our discretion if a customer was having interference issues. I live near Davis Monthan AFB, and phantom door operation is a common thing if you live near the base when using the older 390MHz boards. (insurance claim anyone?)
I don't have any problems with my 420MHz board, in fact I get a better range with my remotes on 420MHz. If you are having problems with an opener made by Chamberlain (LiftMaster, Craftsman, etc) give them a call at (800) 528-5880 and explain the problems you are having and mention that you live near an Air Force Base, and they will likely send out a replacement board free of cost.
If you do have to pay, it is ~$60USD for a new logic board. They are very easy to replace.
Wait, what?
The Air Force was assigned the uncontestable right to use certain frequencies, it has made use of this right, some class B devices were manufactured that are by statute designed to fail in this exact circumstance, and now it's the government that needs to start writing checks?
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
"However, the spectrum is licensed by the FCC as part of the public airwaves." The FCC has no jurisdiction over government (eg military) radio/spectrum use. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration does. www.ntia.gov
And the NTIA trumps the FCC. The NTIA assigns frequency blocks to the FCC.
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