Apparatus for locating and/or tracking stolen or missing vehicles and

Abstract

An improved vehicle or other object-tracking and location system, preferably, though not essentially, of national scope, wherein transponder or transceiver-equipped stolen or missing vehicles or other objects may be located and/or tracked, as by appropriately-equipped police direction-finding tracking vehicles, through homing-in on periodic transponder reply radio transmissions automatically activated by command activation signals broadcast on the same carrier frequency as the transponder reply signals and with encoded vehicle identification information that causes the intended vehicle transponder so to reply, and with provision for modifying the command signals to require an increased rate of periodic transponder reply signal transmission to assist homing-in on the selected vehicle. In a preferred mode of operation, the verification of whether the reportedly missing vehicle is thus transponder-equipped is preferably established by querying the FBI-NCIC computer system, which will provide the said coded vehicle identification information and automatically cause the appropriate sector or area to broadcast said command activation signals.