Emergency distress signal traced back to TV set : Wed, 20 Oct 2004

There is an interesting story in the Corvallis Gazette-Times recounting how a 20 year old apartment dweller received the undivided attention of the local FBI, Air Force, Civil Air Patrol, and the Benton County Search and Rescue team. It started with a Toshiba flat screentelevision Chris van Rossman received as a gift. It was reported to have all the bells and whistles, one of which happened to start transmitting a signal on the 121.5 Mhz band, AKA the international distress call frequency. After receiving a friendly visit from his local authorities, Van Rossman was instructed to keep his TV powered down or risk fines up to $10,000 per day. Toshiba has since responded to the incident by arranging to replace the set free of charge.

I can envision a couple of techs at Toshiba tweaking the yoke coils until they hit the magic frequency, unshielding it, and then sending it out as a joke. You know, geeky engineers amusing themselves. :) --CG   Source: http://www.uhacc.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi

Posted by mongoose, at 10:08 | permanent link | comments