I recently got a portable MP3 CD player, and I’ve been listening to it in the car. But for some reason, my tape deck won’t play nice with the tape adapter–the thing that looks like a tape but plugs into the headphone jack–so I bought an FM transmitter from Radio Shack.
The transmitter’s antenna is simply a foot-long piece of insulated wire that I’ve taped to the dashboard. The signal tends to go in and out, probably because it only runs on two AAA batteries.
But I’ve found that if I touch the antenna or even move my hand nearby, the signal suddenly clears up. What causes this, and is there some way I can take advantage of it without having to keep my hand there?
I thought there would have to be direct contact for that to work… does this mean I can just tape another piece of wire to my antenna without worrying about splicing it? Also, will it draw more battery power?
Well to be honest, I’m not sure why you would need to use any radio transmitter in the first place. You should be able to simply plug the Headphone out or Line out of your CD?MP3 player in to your car radio, via the cassete adaptor. What make/ model of player are you using?
I’m using the factory deck that came with my car ('95 Saturn). When I insert the cassette adapter, it plays for a couple seconds, switches to the other side of the ‘tape’, plays for another few seconds, then switches back. That repeats a couple more times and then it ejects the cassette.
The sprockets on the adapter turn freely, so maybe the deck thinks the tape has broken?
I had the same thing happen to me. I was able to get it to work by turning the cassette adapter over (as if to side “B”), and keeping the tape player on side 2 (which I had to do with a real tape, since it kept autoreversing on the adapter until I got it right). You might play around a bit before giving up.
I never got a decent signal with FM transmitters, except for those I’ve built myself.
The nice thing about having a kid sister was that at one time she was quite happy to be the designated antenna by standing beside the TV and holding the rabbit ears.
I had the same problem with my '96 Saturn tape deck. It seems there is a sensor on one of the spindles (or whatever) to detect whether the tape has broken. Since there is no tape to turn the spindle, the tape deck thinks the tape has broken and spits out the tape.
The Saturn Service Crew directed me to a cassette adapter that turns the little spindley thing to fake out the tape deck. The one I purchased was from Best Buy and was a Sony CPA-9C Car Connecting Pack.
If you are adverse to Best Buy, I am sure a local electronics store in your area should have a similar functioning adapter.
