Automobile enthusiasts know that if you place the tip of an electronic remote door lock key to the soft flesh under your chin, the range of the key is dramatically increased.
In effect, your body becomes an antenna. Instead of unlocking your car door from 20 feet away, now the key will control the car from 50 yards away, sometimes even100 yards or more.
What about 1,000 yards, or even a mile? That possibility is worrying aviation security experts and police in Newark, New Jersey and the adjacent town of Hillside.
In recent weeks, police have played a nightly cat and mouse game trying to catch a group of twenty-something car buffs who use their electronic car keys to signal airliners passing overhead on the landing approach to Newark’s airport.
Police sources, who declined to be identified, said they have credible evidence that passing airplanes are being “pinged” with signals transmitted from electronic automobile keys.
“It appears that a half dozen or even more of these delinquents will stand in an open space, like a park, and join hands, effectively creating a larger antenna,” said a police source who asked not to be identified. “When an airplane passes overhead, the person at the end of the chain will press the tip of the electronic car key to his throat and press the door open button.”
Aviation security sources confirmed that Federal government helicopters equipped with special monitoring electronics have detected the car door opener signals in the Newark and Hillside areas while flying as high as 1,500 feet off the ground.
But these same sources dismiss as “urban legend” and “miscreant bunk” claims made on Internet chat groups that the pinging has caused airliner cabin lights to blink on and off and that one airplane aborted a landing approach after its cockpit navigational devices gave erratic readouts following a Hillside pinging.
While police may be having trouble finding the pingers, a 10 p.m. visitor to a Hillside park one recent warm winter night encountered a half dozen young men, all owners of BMW products, standing in a circle holding hands. Another member of the group, the owner of a MiniCooper turbo-charged S model, held his electronic key to his chin with one hand, while grasping the hand of a member of the ring.
“Watch this,” the pinger said as an airliner in the distance descended toward the Newark airport.
The group softly chanted a countdown: “Five, four, three, two, one, ping!”
Everyone stared at the airplane. Nothing happened.
“It doesn’t work every time. Atmospheric effects. You know. Whatever,” the MiniCooper owner said.
Another member spoke up. “Pinging works, Dude. It really does. I seen the lights flash, lots of times.”