Chris van Rossman's television came with a VCR, DVD player and CD player - plus a hidden feature that had a rescue team beating a path to his door. On the night of Oct. 2, the TV began emitting the international distress signal - the 121.5 megahertz beep emitted by crashed airplanes and sinking boats. The signal was picked up by a satellite, relayed to an Air Force base in Virginia, then to the Civil Air Patrol, then to officials in Oregon. Most signals are false alarms, but they're all checked out, and soon, men in Air Force uniforms, a police officer and Mike Bamberger, a Benton County Search and Rescue deputy, were at van Rossman's apartment door. The solution to the mystery was nailed when van Rossman turned off the TV before answering the door the second time. The signal stopped, too. An inspection of the television confirmed it was the source. Toshiba plans to replace the television and examine the offending one. "We have never experienced anything like this before at Toshiba," said spokeswoman Maria Repole.
"But now I know who ordered all those pizzas the other night."
Posted by: Bob ||
10/20/2004 15:00 ||
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#1
I think the TV willfully sent that signal after seeing van Rossman's apartment. "Look at this dump--I gotta get outta here!"
Posted by: Dar ||
10/20/2004 8:47 Comments ||
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#2
I wonder . . . was he watching Lost or Gilligan's Island when the TV started emitting its signal?
Posted by: Mike ||
10/20/2004 9:38 Comments ||
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#3
What's rather stupid is that the FCC threatened to fine HIM $10K a day for something that really isn't his fault.
#4
It's not his fault it happened the first time. After he knows the TV is emitting a errant signal, it is his fault if he doesn't get it fixed and keeps using it. $10K is the standard fine to keep people from being careless with the ELTs on their boats and planes. Think of it as a attention getter.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/20/2004 15:55 Comments ||
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#5
I still think the feds are overreacting in this case. It's not like it's an actual transmitter that's being used to intentionally interfere with bona fide distress signals. That having been said, maybe the FCC and other similar foreign bodies should look into requiring a standardized coded signal instead of a simple beep. Seems to me an asymmetrical signal would be difficult for rogue TVs to duplicate.....
#7
I have a built-in ELT (emergency locator transmitter) in my plane, as well as a portable one (EPIRB) in case I go in the drink. They transmit on 121.5 mhz. The tone is sorta a siren going from high pitch to low, then high pitch to low, etc. like a sawtooth wave. IIRC, that system will be completely phased out in 2006. The new 400+ mhz systems will be on line. Each one is registered, so you know who has the distress. Location will be pinpoint within minutes, due to a new waveform, instead of a half hour to hours with the old system.
Posted by: Alaska Paul In Nikolaevsk, Alaska ||
10/20/2004 19:39 Comments ||
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Police in Pakistan's Punjab province say a man who was tied to a railway track and killed by a train may have been the victim of an "honour killing".
That's a new twist. Normally it's the woman tied to the tracks by a mustashioed villian.
Police say the man eloped with a woman and the couple later married without the consent of the bride's parents. The families were reconciled but police are hunting the bride's brother who they say held a grudge against the man.
Wanted her for himself, did he?
A relative of the groom was tied to the track at the same time and was also killed by the train, police said. The police chief of Toba Tek Singh district, Saeed Akhtar Bharwana, told the BBC the police had registered a case after receiving a complaint from the family of the husband. The police say they cannot confirm a motive for the killing without a statement from the wife, who has gone missing along with her family since the incident.
Check the other tracks.
I think she was the one tied to the log, up at the old saw mill...
Posted by: Steve ||
10/20/2004 9:38:25 AM ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
