Hello,
I'm a new member to the forums, and a recent purchaser of my second iPod. (I bought the black 4gb Nano).

My car's tape deck (a Kenwood KRC-302) didn't (easily) support direct input, and the tape player doesn't work. So I had to opt for an FM transmitter. I went for the Monster iCarPlay Plus. I'm very happy with it, but I think part of that is because I chose a good station for it. I wanted to share the method of choosing a station, as it may help others.

I highly suggest this especially for those who are looking at getting one of the FM Transmitters which only send to a couple of stations, as you can check the availability of those stations in your area.

So, enough talk, onto the business at hand...

Since I can't post links, change the [dot] to a . at the beginning of the following links...

Step 1> Go to www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/atlas2.html And get the Latitude and Longitude for your City. If you live in a major Metropolitan area, you may want to find other tools to be more precise. Google's your friend!

Step 2> Go to www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/fmq.html Scroll down to the bottom, to the section called "Stations Within a Radius". I started with a radius of 50 miles, so put in 80km. Enter your Lat & Lon from Step 1 & click the submit button.

Step 3> You'll get back a list of all the stations, in order by channel. The 3 fields we're concerned about are:
Channel
ERP
Dist (mi / km)

You want to look for a "missing" channel. Since the FM band is only the odd decimals, you will see 88.1, 88.3, 88.5, 88.7, 88.9, 89.1 etc... Look for it to skip a place. Note down on paper which ones are skipped. (In my area, only 1 number on the whole chart is skipped). Once you find an empty spot, it's important to compare the two numbers on either side of it. For instance, if 88.3 is skipped, look at 88.1 and 88.5. Even though a channel is empty, if the two around it have particularily strong towers (A big number in the ERP column) or close towers (A low number in the distance column) you may want to move on and look for another channel.

Using this method, you should fairly quickly be able to find a quiet channel, and avoid having to search & guess, or frequently change the channel during your commute to work.

Hope this helps someone!