R
RadioPatrol
Guest
From WindowsServerNewsletter
Electronic Bermuda Triangles
Huh? Yes, they exist for real. I was trapped in one this week. No, I'm not talking aliens and tin foil hats. However, to my great surprise, tin foil does play a roll in this story. And no, I'm not smoking lunch either. To start off with, I will disclose here that I went to see a live Eddie Izzard show on Tuesday, which tells you something about my warped sense of humor.
The other thing you need to know is that since about a year I ditched the Jag and I drive a Toyota Camry Hybrid. I live 4 miles from work, so I go to the gas station about once a month. I never took the Camry to downtown Tampa until this week. And that is where I got into a 'dead zone'.
I park the Camry, and press the ON/OFF button to shut down the engine. So far so good. Next, I get out and use the wireless key fob to lock the car. No luck. Get back in, try to get it started. Error message: "Cannot Detect Key". Car sits in park and is totally dead. I can only lock it manually with the hidden little key in the fob. Call the Toyota Dealership for tech support (this vehicle is basically 30 computers on wheels).
They make me do a few things, but conclude that the battery in the key fob is probably dead. "Call your roadside assistance" was the advice. OK, I get the car towed to the dealership and after the show, I grab a taxi home. Cost? $150 plus the Izzard ticket so I'm over 200 bucks out of pocket. Great show by the way, the man is hi-la-rious.
Next day I call the dealership. They tell me, "Sir your car is fine, it worked when we started it here, and we tried 4 times. You can come pick it up any time". I'm asking customer service: "but, but, but... what caused this?" And then she said, "yeah, it's funny, I had the same problem with some one else this morning, identical car and identical spot in downtown Tampa."
And then the penny finally dropped! I remembered an article a few months back in the Saint Petersburg Times about cars not behaving in two spots in the USA: Around the Empire State Building in New York, and downtown Tampa. Focused electronic interference caused car alarms to go off, kill switches to kick in, cars not starting and similar problems. The suspected reason?
Anything from GPS tracking systems to TV satellites to other cars' alarm systems could be responsible, said Robert Martin, who owns Alarmtek Auto Alarm, a Tampa-based online auto security business. "It could be a combination of all those things downtown," he said. "If you're getting blanket radiation from another frequency, you could be in a field that nullifies the wavelengths used to operate your car's alarm."
Apparently, this also causes Toyotas to lose contact with the key fob and since there is no way to bypass that, you are up the creek without a paddle. But here comes the kicker. The Toyota Dealership Customer Service Rep calls me back and states: "If you hold some tin foil or even a tin can above the key fob, this should not happen". I swear, I'm not making this up! But I'm sure as heck not going to drive to Tampa and try that out. As the story unfolds, I'll keep you updated (I asked Toyota for a refund of my expenses). In the mean time, here is a link to the SP Times article of April 22 that proves I'm not entirely off my rocker. There are probably more of these 'Electronic Bermuda Triangles', not yet identified!
In downtown Tampa, the case of the misbehaving cars - St. Petersburg Times
In downtown Tampa, the case of the misbehaving cars
By Emily Nipps, Times Staff Writer
In print: Tuesday, April 22, 2008
TAMPA — A mysterious problem that is causing car alarms to go haywire in downtown Tampa has caught the attention of federal authorities.
The Federal Communications Commission says it is investigating an unknown force that frequently sends car alarms shrieking in a concentrated area of downtown. Neither the car owners nor kind helpers on the street can quiet the racket, and some cars have to be towed away because the alarms won't stop.
FCC spokesman Robert Kenny said he had heard of this type of focused interference happening in only one other place: an area around New York City's Empire State Building. The FCC considers it a serious issue.
"We'll look into the matter," Kenny said, after a reporter called with questions. He declined to give specifics about the New York case.
In January, the New York Daily News ran a story about a five-block area near the Empire State Building where an unusually high number of vehicles either couldn't start or had jammed alarms. Many blamed the TV and FM radio antennas on top of the tower, though Empire State Building officials said that wasn't the cause.
Locally, towing companies and the staff of the Tampa Downtown Partnership deal with the problem at least a few times a week, and it dates back at least a couple of years. In many cases, drivers are stuck as they try to deactivate alarms, some of which inexplicably shut off on their own.
The solution is often simple:
"Relocating the car seems to fix the problem," said Lynda Remund, the downtown partnership's director of operations. The partnership's guides assist motorists, among other duties. "The guides usually will just push it a few feet and the alarm will stop."
The bad spots seem to be in downtown's core, from Franklin Street to Ashley Drive and from Polk to Twiggs streets, said Julio Montalvo, who supervises the downtown guides.
Montalvo and his guides believe the trouble is caused by the tall antennas atop the Colonial Bank building, also known as Park Tower, at 400 Tampa St.
Those rumors aren't true, said Mary Ayo, the building's senior property manager, though this isn't the first time she has checked out the idea.
"I just called the engineer (who inspects the tower's antennas) and said, 'Okay, re-explain this,' " she recently told a reporter.
The biggest antennas people see on top of the building belong to two local radio stations. Their radio waves broadcast outward, not downward, so they aren't likely to interfere with the street level, she said.
"They just wouldn't do that," Ayo said. "They're going to go up and out, not down. And everyone has some (on downtown high-rise buildings)."
Ayo theorized the interference might be caused by the increasing presence of Wi-Fi connections downtown. "That's ground level," she said. "Whether or not it can set off car alarms, I don't know."
(It can't, said Michael Diamond, national spokesman for Wi-Fi Alliance, which owns the trademark for Wi-Fi. Car alarms and Wi-Fi operate in different parts of the radio spectrum.)
When alarms won't stop, cars have had to be towed. Larsen's Towing Service, which covers the downtown area for AAA Auto Club members, is so accustomed to the problem, workers hardly need directions. They have also noticed a lot of activity a few blocks south of Colonial Bank.
"They're all over, but mostly around the Verizon building (at Kennedy Boulevard and Tampa Street)," said company owner Bob Larsen. "I tow cars there all the time. Seems like it's mostly Lexuses and Toyotas, but we see all kinds of cars having that problem, at least a couple a week down there."
Kimberly Blake of Brandon, who works in the Bank of America tower, hasn't had car alarm woes. She had a different problem: If she parked her Mitsubishi in the wrong place, her engine's kill switch engaged and she couldn't start the car.
Blake learned she couldn't park on streets surrounding the building or facing outward in parking decks. Once she asked some men to push her car to an intersection, where it started.
"After a while, I disengaged my kill switch," she said.
So what could be causing this?
Anything from GPS tracking systems to TV satellites to other cars' alarm systems could be responsible, said Robert Martin, who owns Alarmtek Auto Alarm, a Tampa-based online auto security business.
"It could be a combination of all those things downtown," he said. "If you're getting blanket radiation from another frequency, you could be in a field that nullifies the wavelengths used to operate your car's alarm."
The FCC includes a disclaimer in car alarm manuals warning that other radio frequencies may override the alarm's frequencies.
Still, Tampa's situation appears to be rare. Downtown St. Petersburg doesn't have these problems, according to Eric Carlson, the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership's transportation director. All of the same elements, such as Wi-Fi, TV antennas and other devices using radio frequencies, also are there, though the buildings aren't as tall.
Since no one knows for sure what's triggering the alarms, little can be done. So the guides keep pushing cars away from the trouble spots, while wreckers continue making weekly trips to help frustrated callers.
"We work around the clock down there," Larsen said. "And it doesn't seem to be happening anywhere else."
Times staff writer Elisabeth Dyer contributed to this report. Emily Nipps can be reached at nipps@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3431.
that must have been quite an experience.
