Military signals lead to havoc

Thousands of complaints had been fielded from one manufacturer.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
For a time, it seemed as if garage doors at homes near certain military bases had been possessed by mysterious spirits that caused them to open or shut on their own, or otherwise go blooey.
The culprit actually was a new military radio system, which, as it was being deployed at various sites this year, was elbowing out garage openers from the radio frequency on which they had squatted for some 20 years.
This caused quite a stir in communities near Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and the Susquehanna defense depot near New Cumberland, Pa., which were among the first to field the new Land Mobile Radio systems. Reports of balky openers streamed in.
As many as 10,000 complaints about malfunctioning devices were fielded from one major door-opener manufacturer since the radio rollout began in late 2004, according to a Dec. 1 Government Accountability Office report.
The cause was the installation and testing of the radio system, part of an $800 million effort to enhance communications for homeland-security and operations reasons. The Pentagon plans to set up the systems at 137 installations in 28 states over the next five years.
Anticipating coast-to-coast disruptions, the door-opener industry forecast the potential paralysis of untold numbers of the estimated 56 million door openers in use within 50 miles of military facilities nationwide.
"We were very concerned," said Mark Karasek, vice president for engineering of the Chamberlain Group, which manufactures the LiftMaster brand of opening systems.
Using same frequency
The crux of the conflict was the decision by the U.S. military to operate radios on the 390-meghertz frequency -- the same one used by the door openers for about 20 years.
The frequency is the reserved province of the Pentagon, but the military has largely left it unused until now, tolerating the legal appropriation of the band by the openers because of their very low-power operation.
Now, with the electromagnetic-radio-frequency spectrum flooded with cell-phone communications, computer data and signals, every bit of it is needed, especially by the military.
Faced with such a threat to their livelihoods, the door-opener industry formed the Safe and Secure Access Coalition to try to protect its interests. Manufacturers cobbled together retrofit kits to change the frequencies of openers, at a cost to consumers of at least $50 plus installation. Some also scrambled to produce new models that operate on other frequencies, and efforts began to build devices that can hop frequencies to find an open one.
Industry personnel met with Defense Department representatives to try to work out solutions. In one compromise, the military agreed to make public information about where and when the radios will be installed -- information it had initially withheld for security reasons. The Pentagon has also joined a publicity campaign to alert users to possible interference with their openers, and to suggest ways to debug them.
"They are trying to be good neighbors," Chamberlain official Karasek said.