Re: ive always wondered

[Sven Franklyn Weil <sven@gordsven.com>]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In Japan, the FM band is 76 to 90 MHz, which causes problems for
> antipodean purchasers of used Japanese domestic-market cars.  In the

There are some Australian manufacturers of plug-in aftermarket adapters
for such radios.  Australia uses the 88-108 FM band...and this device
somehow makes the Japanese radio pick up the regular FM stations.
Probably by using some sort of harmonic or mirror frequency?  Or is it a
little repeater/downconverter?  

Some Japanese FM radios (especially AIWA and SONY) I've seen pick up the
FM band from 76 to 108 MHz. 

I think that it's because Japanese TV has channels 1, 2 and 3 between 90
and 108Mhz.  So you see Japanese analog-tuned radios with a dial marked
like this:
------------------------------- 
76 80 88 90 92 (1) (2) (3)    |
		96 100 	 108  |	
-------------------------------

I hope my little ASCII rendering comes out decent.... 

Technically, I think you can take one of those analog-tuned USA market
AM/FM/TV1/TV2 receivers to Japan and use it to listen to the local FM
stations (although you'll have to tune by ear instead of using the numbers
on the scale, I guess).

--
Sven Franklyn Weil            "The needs of the many outweigh 
<sven@gordsven.com>                      the needs of the few
<http://www.gordsven.com/sven>                   or the one." 
                                                     -- Surak