Yonkers, NY: Keyfob mystery?

[gewecke]

I love the days when we all started our vehicles with a good old fashioned key!

http://www.lohud.com/article/2012072...nclick_check=1

73,
n9zas


[Attn OP: please review ALL POSTS HERE ARE MODERATED (Please read here for thread rules) before creating threads in this forum otherwise your threads could be deleted. Subject updated]

[DPD1]

With it being that local, should be easy enough to DF down. It's probably the 400 Mhz ones being affected. Could be a lot of things.

[gewecke]

Originally Posted by DPD1

With it being that local, should be easy enough to DF down. It's probably the 400 Mhz ones being affected. Could be a lot of things.

True. It must be quite a rf field for the fob to only function when it's put up to the in-glass antenna!

73,
n9zas

[radioman2001]

I missed the whole story, and the location of the problem, but the Alpine tower is right across the river from Yonkers. Most of the key fobs are on the 380 mhz band, and has their been any activity or building out of any of the new Fed 380 mhz systems? The story also said that it was very intermitant in nature making for some difficult tracking. Yonkers PD is on 453 mhz and I know there are transmitters all over the city running some serious power in the order of 250 watts. Now according to the LoHud story the problem is along Yonkers ave. There is a broadcast transmitter and there were a lot of business transmitters on an apartment building near Central and Tuckahoe Rds.
This sounds like the RF twilight zone around the Empire State Building in N.Y.C. causing the same issues.

[kb2vxa]

There's a problem with the page. When it opens the article is greyed out with this over it, when I close the box it switches to some nonsense about the Tappan Zee Bridge. the new page gives no clue as to where the article may be found.

[radioman2001]

Turn off java script, they want to survey you first. You can read the first page, but I havn't been able to get the page to load with java on and stop loading before the popup appears. I hate LoHud, it introduced a whole slew of viruses some time back. Not so much as an apology when I notified them. The only paper worse is the Poughkeepsie Urinal.

[ff026]

i caught it on channel 5 last night:

Car keyless remote dead zone in Yonkers - New York News | New York Breaking News | NYC Headlines

[radioman2001]

Something I hadn't thought of, possibly arcing underground electrical lines, they sure can make a mess of all radio reception. Good catch by the Foxhound if it is.

[902]

The even side of the street the guy says? My first guess would've been that sold-out rooftop on the odd side of the street.

My money is on a radiating switching power supply, probably in a plasma TV. They are incredibly noisy and incredibly powerful "unintentional" radiators, and foreign made consumer garbage usually minimally complies with shielding requirements.

My second guess is an unterminated master antenna system in the garden apartments which might have been partly torn out, but left plugged in. Actually had this happening on VHF Channel 25 in NY Harbor 23 years ago, when the video carrier of 157.25 was blocking the receivers on the Empire State Building and in Sunnyside - I tracked it to an apartment building in Elmhurst and found an abandoned, but still plugged in RF modulator cranking out signal to cut and unterminated RG-59. The super let me in and we found it in the basement. Unplugged the cord, cut it flush at the power supply (don't try this at home, I had the super with me and permission from the building owner), and no one ever missed it or complained.

[radioman2001]

Cable TV is a big problem, they only respond if at all after you do the leg work. We have issues with switching supplies and they interfere with our own equipment. A big callback complaint is when a certian series of train is parked next to another different or the same series in the yard.

You had receivers across the street from the Queens Court House, and down on Broadway too, didn't you? I had to go down to Broadway on Labor day and replace the PA tube in CH25 one year, I think it was 1995?

[902]

Originally Posted by radioman2001

Cable TV is a big problem, they only respond if at all after you do the leg work. We have issues with switching supplies and they interfere with our own equipment. A big callback complaint is when a certian series of train is parked next to another different or the same series in the yard.

You had receivers across the street from the Queens Court House, and down on Broadway too, didn't you? I had to go down to Broadway on Labor day and replace the PA tube in CH25 one year, I think it was 1995?

Yep, the apartments by the court house (with the debris piled in the bathtub) was air-to-ground and some other stuff I have trouble remembering (UHF IMTS???). Receivers were at Empire. Broadway and Varick was the transmitter section of the old low band MTS telephone system, with the receivers on Staten Island (the site is still there). The IMTS transmitters were on 10th Avenue in Midtown. All split site. And, 35.22 was two yagis phased on opposite corners of Empire. The remaining corners were yagis for 43 MHz. And, 152.84 was everywhere, with Quintron QT-250Bs, and 900 was pretty new at the time.

1995? I was gone for 5 years by then, but I seem to remember they sold it to Murray Cohen.

Those switching supplies are awful. My neighbor down here has a plasma TV that just happens to end up on the input to my 440 repeater. I get a repetitive chopping noise on anything that's not full-quieting when his Walmart Home Theatre is on.

[MtnBiker2005]

This link should work for everyone...

http://www.lohud.com/article/2012072...emotes-Yonkers

[radioman2001]

Yep, Murray, worked on and off for him since 1973. I havn't spoke to him in a few years, last I heard he wasn't doing too well.

[902]

Originally Posted by radioman2001

Yep, Murray, worked on and off for him since 1973. I havn't spoke to him in a few years, last I heard he wasn't doing too well.

That's a shame. I never actually met him, but worked on much of the pre-sale stuff making sure everything was complete and functional. I did the WeePatch/River Patch units when senior management cut the RT lines from Newark, NY (rolled the company's stick shift mini-Blazer down the hill there - who the hell would actually buy one of those? Must've saved $50), Utica, Plattsburgh, etc.

The marine operator system was always my favorite. I grew up listening to the public coast channels on one of those cheap Japanese AM/FM/PSB receivers. It was probably the capstone of whatever career I ever had being able to see and even work on some of that stuff... even if "Other Mobile Services" was referred to as "Obsolete Mobile Services" up in the Crystal Palace.

I'd love to hear what the super sleuth found up there. We had another similar wireless triangle in the Midwest, where people's cars wouldn't start.

[radioman2001]

For a few years there have been stories on and off about a similar problem surrounding the Empire State Building, but I don't think or heard whether anybody has put much effort in finding the problem considering all the 1 + megawatt transmitters up there. I think the problems started around the time of DTV.

Yea Murry was a strange bird,(but I loved him anyway) he rewrote the software in the Zetron 45 for his uses, and made perf board connections to a another micro with his written firmware to make it dial out on a POTS line to an answering service. I had him on one of my sites in Queens for years. This makes me want to call him, maybe later today.