Posts by Kevin Wood

No thermals?

Call me cynical but as a glider pilot I remain unconvinced.

An unpowered glider could have made that flight, without any power source, under a decent cloud street using energy from thermals.

Choosing to do it in the middle of Spain in spring was never going to be that convincing. An overcast day like today in the UK would have been a better choice.

Check your cylinder locks!

Quite apart from the possibility that the vehicle or key fob battery could go flat, the frequencies on which these devices operate are shared with many other users, so it's far from guaranteed that an RF keyfob will get you into your car.

My car keyfob operates on a frequency inside the 70cm amateur radio band, so it's perfectly feasible that a radio amateur could be sitting in the same car park talking legitimately on a mobile radio and inadvertently jamming every keyfob in the car park (incidentally, his license conditions would permit him to use up to 40,000 times as much transmit power as a keyfob).

As to how a vehicle could transmit the jamming signal, I smell a rat here. Why would a transmitting device be built into the car itself? It only has to receive from the keyfob.

Whilst these devices do have rolling codes to prevent the identity of any individual keyfob being "sniffed" from the airwaves they do not, as far as I am aware, change frequencies, so if the frequency on which the keyfob operates is being interfered with or in use by a legitimate user, you'd better have an old-fashioned key as a backup!

The problem is, with lack of use, "old-fashioned" locks tend to be found siezed when you most need them! Give them a dab of grease ASAP!