Hi all,
A few days ago I bought the Whole House 3.0 transmitter to start whatever station it is that I'll be broadcasting. With so many myths about Part 15 FM around, I decided to do some real world testing.
NOTE: I did not put the device in Canadian mode. Ever.
This was brand new, out of the box from Amazon. Not used, so as not to have it accidentally set to Canadian mode. No lightning bolt on the LCD panel, and "US" in the upper left corner.
There's no real need to go into where I live in detail: it's a suburb. Trees, houses, parks.
I put the transmitter on my second floor window sill (window closed) and just ran iTunes off my old iPhone 5. I set the tuner to a known, empty frequency (I checked) and went around with the car.
You know that myth about how Part 15 FM only goes 200 feet? Total lie. The distance from my house to the farthest corner is 425 feet (south). Strong signal. Past that, to about 800 feet in the second block, I lost the signal completely.
So, I drove around the block and went perpendicular to the first street I drove down (east). So now the vector from my house to the street I'm driving down is south east, moving east. Strong signal to 400-500 feet, spotty to about 800 feet, and then dead until I picked it up VERY faintly around 950ish feet.
So, back to my house, and now I'm driving west. Strong signal about 600 feet out, and then faded to 815 feet where I had to turn.
This completely backs up my math from my post a few weeks ago.
Did the same test with my wife's car - same results with very slight variations.
Someone here (theLegacy? ArtisanRadio?) said that the WH3 should be able to go 800 feet. It's true.
I will not be testing Canadian mode. There's really no point to it for THIS test. I just wanted to see how far a Part 15 FM transmitter really goes. Besides, someone tested that for us already.
I also don't have equipment to do any kind of field strength tests.
So, there you go. Myth....BUSTED