I wonder how eveyones automatic garage door openers are working in the area no that the control channel is active??!!!!
See reprint of article below.
JamesO
Fort Detrick Radio System Jams Remote Garage Doors
Updated: Sunday, Feb. 27, 2005 - 2:47 PM
FREDERICK, Md. - A new radio system at Fort Detrick will improve
communication with the Pentagon. The downside: some people may have to
open their garage doors the old-fashioned way.
The Land Mobile Radio system will allow Fort Detrick and 10 other Army
installations in the Washington region to communicate with the Pentagon
and civilian emergency personnel by hand-held radios.
In a suburban sacrifice to emergency preparedness, Frederick residents
could experience a rash of dead door openers in coming days, as the
Army's Fort Detrick begins using a new radio system linking local and
federal government emergency personnel.
The new system uses a frequency that has been owned by the military for
decades but used only by a couple of consumer devices, including garage
door openers.
Testing of the system has generated a dozen calls to Fort Detrick from
residents with problems, and when the system begins operating on 3,000
military properties across the country in coming months, hundreds more
complaints may follow.
"I think the Army ought to buy us a new opener or pay for a converter,"
Marty Kreps told The Washington Post.
"If the government was fair, they'd give us a tax deduction," Michael
Foster said.
Negative, the Army says.
"This frequency belongs to the military," said Michael J. Batt,
telecommunications engineer and frequency manager at Fort Detrick, who
is coordinating the radio system rollout. "I'd rather know Frederick
County has a radio system it can rely on in an emergency and have to
walk a few feet to open my garage."
In May, residents near Eglin Air Force Base in Florida had problems
with
their garage door openers while the base was testing its land mobile
system. In November, Fort Detrick finished work on a 150-foot radio
tower, which juts above a grove of satellite dishes about a mile from
the entrance to North Crossing. In mid-January, Detrick began testing
the radios.
That was about the same time Darlene Foster returned from the Safeway
to
find her garage door immobile. And the same week, Marty and George
Kreps
learned that to open their garage, Marty Kreps said, "you have to pull
up to the door like you're going to run into it."
Surfing the Internet, George Kreps learned that this was a known
problem
with two possible solutions: "Either you get a $60 kit" to change the
frequency "or you spend $150 on a whole new system.
