[Scan-DC] Fort Detrick Radio System Jams Remote Garage Doors

[Adam Brock]

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."

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=431929

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