Car FM Transmitters

[Radio_TVGuy]

@Radiohead

I’m posting this here since i think it’s what I heard today.

At Belmont in Lake Macquarie NSW, my car radio detected a station on 103.4 playing a modern up tempo dance/pop song (don’t know what).

That stayed in range for about 2 km until Belmont North. That faded quickly so I suspected there must have been a car in front or behind me using an in car FM transmitter on that frequency that had just turned off left or right.

A few kms later, it returned again! (near Bennetts Green). This time i heard a few seconds of a few different songs, a bit of Queen, The Veronicas, Don McLean, quite different to what I heard earlier. Then it faded again.

I wonder just how many FM car transmitters in use are on 103.4 FM in the Newcastle area.

[Radiohead]

I doubt there would be many, as that’s the first time I’ve heard one on 103.4. And there are a number of other frequencies down the bottom of the FM band where NBN-3 used to be that could be used too.

[Dani-Chan]

Did hear a Car FM Transmitter on 99.6 between Mittagong and Bowral when driving yesterday playing music. Must be a car trailing me as in front of me was a Woolworths Truck.

[Sonics89]

Could have been the truck driver using a transmitter for the trucks cheap am/fm radio

[Radio_TVGuy]

I wonder if anyone’s heard or recorded any car FM transmitters recently that aired private phone calls. They always never fail to give me a cracker of a laugh.

[mullauna]

And why hasn’t anyone sent them into a radio breakfast program?

[melb_mateyy0]

An old amusing Reddit thread I stumbled across https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/4ulvnd/radio_station_1080fm/

[Radio_TVGuy]

You won’t believe what I received whilst trying to listen to 3GL Geelong on FM this afternoon…

- YouTube

[tvcl]

@Radio_TVGuy

I wonder if anyone’s heard or recorded any car FM transmitters recently that aired private phone calls. They always never fail to give me a cracker of a laugh.

Yeah, on my TVCL2 TEF server, I’ve heard phone calls on 107.5 several times.

[ninkeon58]

Had my first car FM transmitter pass through and hang around long enough to get caught by the TEF’s autoscanner. It didn’t have RDS (do any of them?), in stereo and was transmitting right on the bottom of the band at 87.5mhz, with a very interesting taste in music.

The amount of swearing I heard while it was audible puts Triple J to absolute shame.

[Radiohead]

@ninkeon58

It didn’t have RDS (do any of them?)

I think I’ve seen a couple of with something like BT-67 in the PS field, but that’s all (I assume that’s where it’s coming from).

[ninkeon58]

With my post now being moved to the dedicated thread, I would like to try and find one that does full RDS. It really doesn’t sound too hard to implement (famous last words), seeing as I have an adapter to run it off a 12V 3A wall brick, I could test them with the TEF.

[AustraliaRadio232]

If you do find one that has programmable RDS let me know. I’d be interested to try one out too.