so, I went ahead and tried this. Mike, I'm sorry that I called you a lil early in my experiment.

I tried the range of my keyless at my house with the car in the garage. At first, the remote keyless stopped at about 30-40 feet to the front. I put the remote to the soft spot under my chin and got about 10 or so more feet distance.

My wife poked her head out the garage/kitchen door to ask wtf I was up to. I demonstrated. This time I got more than 50 feet distant before I ran into the fenceline separating the houses in front of my house and the houses behind them. hmmm. interesting.

I then took my car out to the same helo landing strip that my sig pic was taken at. I got about 20 feet away from the car when the fob didnt work at hip level (on me, that's roughly 2.5 feet AGL). I elevated the remote to my shoulder level pointed towards the car. I got maybe 5 more feet. I elevated the fob overhead pointed towards the sky (my wrist is not that limber to aim towards the car, yall. sorry.). I got another foot or two. I then, at that distance, put the fob to my chin and my ear as discussed in another thread. no response. I ended up about the same distance away from the car as I was with the remote at shoulder-level.

I repeated the above steps towards the aft of the car. similar results, slightly different distances.

repeating the steps for forward and aft, I then experimented with left and right, in that order. Interestingly enough, I got MUCH greater distances for hip-, shoulder-, and overhead-level to the sides than forward and aft. again, no marked improvement for fob-to-chin or fob-to-ear.

that all being said, I WAS able to get about 10% locking at 5 or 10 feet further with fob-to-chin or fob-to-ear. If, for some reason, you need to lock or unlock your car at ranges of 40-60 feet, and all you need is that one-in-ten chance of it working, the anecdotal evidence is there. However, the results are not compelling AT ALL to say that these urban legends work. RF is a very tricky thing to work with, and especially more so since I am NOT an Electrical Engineer.

John, I was calling to see if you had any RF experience or if you specialized in the field to try and steer my experiment.

Taking from the TV show, this one is BUSTED.

With other fobs it is practical for further distances. I have a fob for the corvette that tells me if something is happening to the car 1/4 mile away. I was in class once at the college and it was going off, the rain set it off the windshield sensor.

has anyone tryed the cell phone one???

Did I not say in yesterday's post that a bunch of you would try this! I bet your neighbors are all wondering WTF are they doing?

for the full experiment, like I said, I moved to the old airfield. No one there but coyotes and rabbits.

Holding the key fob higher puts it more in line with the receiver behind the dash. I've also noticed that if you're behind the car, it works better at shoulder height rather than from the hip. The operating range of the transmitter is between 3 and 29 feet. You may need to stand closer to the car, during rainy and snowy weather. I've never tried testing the range as you have, Rick.