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Re: Wednesday, June 29, 2005
I'm late to the party but wanted to share my experiences with _three_ of these devices. I had an adapter that looked like a cassette tape with a cable tail. The adapter had a playback head inside that coupled with the playback head in the in-dash unit. Great fidelity, better than any of the over-the-air units so far. Unfortunately, the mechanicals inside the pseudocassette would jam, causing the tape player to spit it out. An uneeded distraction on Westbound I80 in the morning. First a reference to Doc's mention of inverse square. I'm driving a Ford Expedition (I need the room for work gear; radios, hand tools and the like.) The broadcast radio antenna is silk-screened on the passenger side rear window. About as far away from the signal source as possible. My work takes me from the Sierra foothills to the bay area a couple of times a week. I traverse probably three radio markets, with several instances of channel reuse between points A & Z. My first try was a Sakar I-Concepts EWT-950 from the bargain bin at OfficeMax. It was cheap and covered the whole FM Broadcast band in three steps of a slide switch. Within the range of each switch stop there was an analog control to dial in the frequency desired. The audio cable was barely a foot long. I'm guessing the cable length is chosen to keep the transmitter within Part 15 limits. Based on the miserable signal strength, it had to be abundantly legal. Impressive battery life on two AAA cells seems to support that. The other wrinkle was that since the car radio is synthesized, landing only on the channels spaced each 200 kilohertz, you needed a safecraker's touch on the tiny analog (varactor?) control. The weak output and changing signal environment had me twiddling about every other county line. Again, divided attention on I80 = not good. Second time around was the Belkin TuneCast with the LCD display. I was still operating on the assumption that full FM band coverage was an absolute requirement. Nice design, digital frequency selection, shorty cord and a battery hog. The tipoff to the power consumption should have been the fact that a cigarette plug power adapter is included in the blister pack. Even with the ability to suck dry a set of batteries in one trip to SF and back, the Belkin managed to be a "peanut whistle". Kevin Kelly on his "Cool Tools" site turned me on to this little guy. http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000855.php The whole thing plugs right into the cigarette lighter plug, eliminating batteries altogether. The claimed ability to play MP3's right out of a UB flash drive seemed cool. There is also a connector on side to allow connecting iPod's, CD/MP3 disc players, whatever. I was at first concerned about the limited number (7) of transmit channels, all down at the "public broadcasting" end. Once upon a time this area had lots of open channels even in most metro areas. The combination of traditional public stations and religious stations licensing translators and even whole new licenses (witness KQED/KQEI) have pretty much chewed up those vacancies. I needn't have worried. It turns out the the limited number of channels is plenty and simplfies use to boot. This unit captures (covers up) all but the strongest local stations in my experience. Since the adapter cable is not even attached when you (try to) play from the USB port, you have to wonder how the RF escapes. It finally dawned on me that the signal is getting pumped into the plus 12 volts of the car, probably illuminating the whole vehicle. The MP3 player has some problems, it quits randomly, requiring a power down reboot (pull it out, push it in). If you don't plan on using that feature, the VR3 is a hot setup. I found mine in the automotive department at Wal-Mart.
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