Quote:
Originally Posted by davepl
I have LoJack in the vehicles I care about, for one important reason. If I call the police in MY AREA AND STATE, they police know what LoJack is, they have the equipment, and will actually do the work. Tracking your vehicle on your own is likely a bad idea.
I asked those questions of the local PD before I bought.
I have once or twice tested it by moving the car without the fob present, and sure enoufgh it notifies you.
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Here's a bit of fun history WRT to Lojack. Back when it first came out, I was fairly active in radio direction finding in the amatuer radio community. A friend of mine, Jim (KA4IIA), had made some significant improvements in the Roanoke Doppler tracker and a bunch of us hams in Atlanta were running them. We'd heard of Lojack and would monitor the 173.075 megahertz frequency hoping to hear one.
One Saturday we were running a fox hunt (a transmitter that periodically transmits a short message is hidden, and the hunters have to find it) and we heard some noise on 173.075. Jim and I were in my Jeep Grand Cherokee which was festooned with antennas and receivers and one of Jim's doppler units. We start DFing (Direction Finding) the signal and wound up in the MARTA Park'n'Ride lot in Roswell just off GA 400 next to a passenger car with a guy sitting in it.
We pulled up next to him and he rolled down the window, and we asked him if he had a Lojack unit. And he wants to know how the hell we knew that, and how we found him. So we told him, showed him the rig, etc, and he was seriously impressed. He was one of the trainers teaching the Fulton County PD how to locate Lojack equipped cars. He'd been out there for 45 minutes, and the trainees still hadn't found him, and yet here are two amateur radio operators that heard the signal, had suitable equipment, and tracked him down. We hung around until the cops showed up, and went through the whole spiel again.
Back then (and I don't know if there's a Generation II or Generation III version of Lojack now or not), the receivers in the police cars had a 6 digit display that would show the Lojack ID number (2 characters and 6 digits, IIRC) on a display when a Lojack transmitting vehicle was within a moderately close range of the police car (maybe 2 miles, depends on terrain and environment). The cops would the call the number into dispatch asking if was an active vehicle.
The display also had 16 LEDs, representing 360 degrees divided into 22.5 degree sections. It the police car is facing north, and the LED at the 90 degree mark was lit, it meant the signal was coming at 90 degrees to the right of the police car. So you'd basically drive towards the signal, using the LEDs to tell you where it was in relation to you. IIRC there was also some audio output from the receiver, and the quality and volume gave an idea of how close you were.
For Lojack to work, the officer has to first notice the Lojack ID number on the display, and be interested and not busy enough to pursue it. Recovering a stolen vehicle is pretty low in priority compared to a traffic accident, domestic violence, etc. It's probably the lowest priority event they deal with.
Lojack also presumes that the stolen vehicle is within range of one of the transmitters that can activate it, and that it hasn't already been ripped out. I'm a little skeptical of their 90% recovery rate. Is that 90% of reported thefts? 90% of units within the activation area?
There's also readily available equipment for thieves to tell them that a Lojack unit is transmitting from the car, which may cause them to abandon it (which adds to the odds of it being recovered less damaged). OTOH, you pull it into a metal trailer, and the Lojack trailer can't hear the transmitter to tell it to activate.
All in all, certainly better than nothing, and probably worth the insurance discount. But neither is it a panacea.