Dialing 911 on Cell Phone

[cerlawson]

Today my friendly neighbor hood policeman stops in. All I could figure was maybe one of my kids has been in a wreck. No such bad luck. He says my cell phone is open on a 911 line. Both of our cell phones had been turned off for a few days now.

He said the satellites triangulated on my house.

Reminds me of my step son coming here with GPS. They brought him to a house about a block away.

Back where we used to live there was a good paved road to lead to our part of a village. There also was a private gravel road that came in up a steep hill, not open in winter. Guess what road the GPS uses to direct folks there. Yup, the gravel road.

Moral to the story, in an emergency don't depend on GPS to direct them to you.

 

[MXBX]

GPS takes people about a mile from our business. We get a few phone calls every week asking "Exactly where are you?" If we were running from the law, I'm sure they'd find us, however.

 

[Daren Todd]

GPS is real screwy here and also in Pennsylvania if you tried to use our address to get to the old shop it would direct you to a ditch and chain link fence And railroad tracks about 1/2 mile up the road.

In PA, I used GPS coordinates to try and find an oil field pad. Guy was sitting on site and gave me the coordinates to his current location. GPS dropped me 15 miles on the opposite side of a mountain range. Had to drive thirty miles around to get to the location. This was after triple checking his coordinates and comparing to what mine said I got a good tour of the northern Pennsylvania country side that day

 

[OldeEnglish]

I was staying in a Hilton in Tampa a few years ago. 3 AM the cops were banging at my door to open up . I say...Hold on a sec! Let me throw some pants on . I opened up the door and they were looking for a stolen Iphone. They said the find my phone app tracked them to here! I say sarcastically... No kidding! It even tells you the hotel room number?!?! They didn't like that Asked me to search my room. I let them, nothing to hide here. Hell, I had a regular flip phone! They said sorry and went in their way.

 

[ipz2222]

search my room,,, absolutly not, get a search warrant...

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Wonder how long this will go on before a class action suit gets filed against Apple...

I agree completely. You want in my room, you better have a search warrant. There were several times I had people beating on my hotel doors completely oblivious both of where they were and that a .40 cal was very close to aiming at them on the other side of the door.

 

[OldeEnglish]

search my room,,, absolutly not, get a search warrant...

My friend that is a cop said the same thing. Like I said, nothing to hide so I have nothing to worry about. Trust me, they felt pretty stupid by the time they left and they hardly searched anything.

In my past experiences...work with the police, 9 times out of 10 it works in your favor.

Wasn't armed Ray, but I did look through the peep hole first. I know where your coming from, stayed in some dives in my day, but I didn't expect to have the cops beating at my door at a Hilton...

 

[Profnohair]

Went to the Smoky Mountains last summer. I like to go exploring the area I am in on a joy ride. The family has to be on a direct mission or they don't want to be in the car. So off I go and go up into the mountain outside of Gatlinburg. I got turn around so I turned on the gps to get me off of the top of the mountain. I followed it and kept seeing signs saying "don't trust your gps, you're going the wrong way". Well I turn a corner and hit a dead end with a a sign attached to it saying " I told you not to trust your gps". Lesson learned.

 

[skeets]

From what I understand ,and please take this with a grain of salt, since the war on terrorism has been going on GPS the satellites have been giving a false readings, in some cases several miles.
Again from what I have read this was due to the government attempting to protect sites with some type of military, or communication afflation. I know that when I worked for the government all of our field offices, when using the GPS, were no where close to where they actually were, like I said in some cases several miles off

 

[ShaunBlake]

... oblivious both of where they were and that a .40 cal was very close to aiming at them on the other side of the door.

Not a little .4 -- .44mag! "Oh, Ah'm so sorry, sherrif! Ah thot dey musta been drug deelerz!" <hee hee hee>

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Shaun!

Its all they would let me travel with! Beats the big "zippo" regular are allowed to carry inflight today. I'll tell you, after you get used to traveling armed, traveling un-armed kinda makes you feel vulnerable.

What a huge mistake but so typical of "big gubmint..." After 9-11, they should have encouraged people to fly armed. Knives with 3.5" blade or smaller used to be fine through security. Problems occurred: Zero.

It is senseless bureaucracy. Gun free zones have proven to be some of the most dangerous places for honest people.

 

[cerlawson]

An update. I'm a ham radio operator and have seen reflections of the higher frequencies affecting our transmitter hunt contests. I have a friend who works with GPS and cell phone situations. The subject problem of false location probably can be blamed on reflections lengthening the paths that are "measured" by the cell phone towers. If the phone is in a building, especially a basement, this lengthening of the path becomes quite bad and the phantom location computed might be miles off. Goes to show don't depend on a cell phone to be a dependable location assistant in an emergency unless you can talk and say where you are.

 

[ShaunBlake]

Its all they would let me travel with! Beats the big "zippo" regular are allowed to carry inflight today. I'll tell you, after you get used to traveling armed, traveling un-armed kinda makes you feel vulnerable.

Captain, thanks for making me aware of your feelings of vulnerability. It's unfortunate that I had to hear you say it, it's so obvious.

What a huge mistake but so typical of "big gubmint..." After 9-11, they should have encouraged people to fly armed. Knives with 3.5" blade or smaller used to be fine through security. Problems occurred: Zero.

Actually, it isn't a mistake; it's a carefully orchestrated effort to thwart the efforts of the gun nuts to remain armed in spite of our kind and protective government's benign attempts to get us to get rid of our firearms so that bad people won't be able to use them to do bad things.

Also, please be careful making statements that might reveal the fallacy of the arguments used to justify banning of certain carry-on items; such behavior often incenses those who dream up those policies, and their rage unleashes astonishing levels of vindictiveness.

It is senseless bureaucracy. Gun free zones have proven to be some of the most dangerous places for honest people.

Well, isn't every place dangerous for honest folk? I'll bet most of us at least occasionally feel vulnerable locked up in our own homes.

 

[sheepfarmer]

I had the impression that shooting holes in the airplane and hitting key lines, fuel tanks, etc had the distinct possibility of bringing the whole plane down and killing everyone. I would prefer to be on a plane in which passengers are not armed.

 

[Diydave]

I prefer an armed society. An armed society is a polite society...

 

[D2Cat]

Being one that got picked on when I was a kid.

I was taught after that, "Get there firstest, with the mostest".

 

[CaveCreekRay]

Airplanes are very resilient. Systems are redundant and you'd have to be pretty lucky to hit a critical item. The scene in Goldfinger is not real at all.

I am not saying let everyone be armed with firearms, just the basic edged weapons, like people used to carry for decades. We had ZERO problems with the general public and those on 9-11 could have defended themselves had they had a chance.

Back to the topic of the thread...

In the lead-up to the invasion of Kuwait, the Air Force was tinkering with the GPS signals. As somebody mentioned, they can adjust accuracy for any enemy munitions that might use our signals.

Well, the airliner Ground Proximity Warning System altitude measurement runs off the GPS. I am letting down into Albuquerque from the east and there is a big mountain you have to fly around. We are in the middle of this cloud and the Air Force re-adjusts the altitude signal and our GPS defaults for 60 seconds into the "There was a mountain there and we were clear but now we don't know for sure so lets go BATTLE STATIONS!!!" mode.

We get "WHOOP WHOOP... PULL UP NOW! TERRAIN! TERRAIN!!!"

The controller is telling us, "I have you OK but whatever you need you are cleared to climb..." The Flight Attendants were holding on for dear life as we max performed the plane climbing out as steep as possible to avoid a mountain that, thankfully wasn't there. All because the GPS glitched for a second and our system went uber-safe.

Technology! Ain't it GREAT (when it works!!!)?

 

[ShaunBlake]

Technology! Ain't it GREAT (when it works!!!)?

Well, yes, I'm one who loves and embraces it (as eagerly as a Ludite is able). And to your criticism: in that emergency situation, weren't you (we) better off than before GPS, to say nothing of RADAR? Or do you think (or know) that you might be better off without certain technologies?