I came across this old NAB report on car FM transmitters recently. It's probably been posted before, but it was new to me.
Reading the report makes it seem that most of these devices were wildly out of compliance with FCC rules. Most were out of compliance, but not hugely. Comparing them to the Canadian BETS-1 standard, which is minimally 60 dbuv/m (I just took it to be 1000 uv/m at 3 meters as opposed to 100 uv/m at 30 meters and applied the appropriate equation to get dbuv/m - it's probably more but that's OK), most fall under or just over that limit. And from experience, there isn't all that much difference in real world range between Part 15 and BETS-1. Certainly not enough to justify the outcry. And particularly since most of the tested transmitters had passed through FCC approved labs and got certified.
These are not 7 watt transmitters. Or even multiple milliwatts.
Plus, as the report does grudgingly admit, operating them in cars (i.e., metal boxes) does restrict the field strength outside that metal box as well.
If anything, all it does is show, as we all know, that the FCC needed (and still needs) to beef up its certification process.
I also had a laugh that the NAB obviously felt it needed to put an obviously overpowered and uncertified device in the tests, just to make the results look more compelling - I'm referring to the Hobbytron FM25B, which is just a Ramsey transmitter in disguise.
You can still go to Amazon.com today and find lots of way overpowered, uncertified and illegal to use transmitters. Why waste everybody's time with piddly little car transmitters, when decades later these things are still easy to buy. Crack down on them, and a lot of your pirate problems go away.
Amazon USA has all the CZE, CZH ones from .5 to 25 watts various models all still there...no complaints from the NAB about that. And I looked on Amazon Canada and those are not there but I came across this one that is 500mW and SMA connector for remote antenna and advertised as a radio station and range is 2000+ meters. So in Canada these illegal ones are alive and well also and this one is $48 Canadian$. What pisses me off is that anyone can get these as well as all the others from the USA as Amazon ships to Canada and I do it legally and spend $500+ for a legal one(Decade) and someone with these can do it in my area and completely screw me up as space on FM is at a premium. If I was screwed up by someone with these illegal, uncertified ones and I'm doing it legally I won't hesitate to report it and get it stopped. I would get the location of the source myself with the spectrum analyzer and tell ISED exactly where it's coming from. Yet there's no complaints about this from the Canadian NAB. But as Artisan mentioned those car ones which are so puny get the attention.Here is a screen shot of the one on Amazon Canada right now. Hope it shows up, may not as you can't share URL's from Amazon. This is one I have never seen before.
