F  E  E  D  -  P  O  I  N  T

After the first week of July, it became cool and we were plagued with heavy rain showers until August 14th. We had a couple more heavy rains after that, but things have improved. We have actually seen a couple of sunrises and moonlight nights. Gardens struggled with all the rain. Some things grew well, others rotted.

My cat has given me a good workout with the tracker. Sometimes she takes off into the woods and I go crashing through the brush following the signal, pointing the antenna in a sweep to get the loudest signal.

Our club picnic was scheduled for August 2, but that weekend was a washout. The next two weekends did not look much better, so I decided that we would have the picnic at our house on Sunday, August 10th. If it was not raining, we would picnic by the pond. If it was, we would picnic in the house.

The morning of the picnic was very foggy, but by picnic time it had lifted somewhat. Everyone had a chance to inspect our raised beds and the new water turbine. Ken and Theresa's two young boys, Kameron and Kris, were intrigued by the number of Garter Snakes they saw on the hill next to the solar panels.

When time to eat, the sky was threatening, and it was sprinkling a bit, so we enjoyed a lot of good food in the house. There were 17 of us. We had a brief meeting (11 minutes), and some visited the pond after we ate. The weather had improved.

Rogue Radio signals in Philadelpia were tracked down by hams in that area. Residents of Philadelphia complained to a local TV station that their remote car door entry devices would not work in the parking lot of a local store. An investigative reporter from NBC-10 called everyone she knew who might help her find the source of the interfering signals.

The shoppers thought perhaps the interference was from the local power company, but officials there said it was not from them. Others thought cellular towers were to blame. It turned out there no cellular towers in the area. Lu Ann Cahn, the reporter, said even the police did not know what was causing the problem.

Cahn's luck changed when she met two hams, Reggie Leister, N3KAS, and Bob Rex, K3DBD of the Pottsdown Area Amateur Radio Club. They were quick to volunteer their help and accompanied Lu Ann to the problem parking lot.

Rex built an antenna of aluminum tubing and connected it to a spectrum analyzer. Rex read the analyzer and announced there were two strong signals coming from Kohl's Department store. Moving closer, they found the signals emanating from two sets of doors. The signals were constant.

It turned out that it was the security cameras, which were on constantly and were operating at louder than allowable strength. Three days after this discovery, remote car door devices were working.

Cahn gave credit to the hams for their help in solving the mystery. " We here at NBC-10 were so curious as to why these remote car locks would just stop working, so we thought we should really solve this mystery. I have to give kudos to Reggie Leister and Bob Rex with the Pottstown Area Amateur Radio Club. They were so great and so excited...............we called so many people and nobody knew anything until we talked to these ham radio operators. They were so wonderful and knew all about radio signals. They created their own gadgets to help us figure this out. We really want to thank them for their help with this."