Radio station clusters piss me off.
 

When I say "radio station clusters", I mean when there's four or five radio stations bunched really close together, then one unused radio frequency, and then another four or five stations.

What brought it to my attention was that I got a radio transmitter that I can dock my iPod in in my car. I live in Northwest Arkansas, where we only have 5,000 radio stations (not literally). Half of those radio stations are pretty obscure; I don't know of anyone that listens to them.

It was hell trying to find a channel where I could get decent reception. Even then, the signal tends to fade in and out. What's the point in having a radio transmitter if you can't find a station to use it on, y'know?

Anyone else ever have this problem, or even share my aggravation?

I'm not certain I understand the complaint--is it that the stations are causing interference with one another because the frequencies are so close?

Ah...well, about the only thing you could do is keep trying frequencies. :P

No, it's because he can't find a frequency that's vacant.

Wouldn't clustering help with that? If the same number of stations were evenly distributed over the frequency range, the maximum gap between stations would be even lower.

No, because the frequencies begin at 88.1 Mhz, and end at 107.9 Mhz. The biggest frequency gap between stations is 2 frequencies. Even then, the occupied stations bleed over to the vacant stations pretty badly.

Well. It's not very easy to weaken down the stations signals. But you could try to strengthen your own signal. Perhaps you can use some kind of amplifier or anything. Then your Ipod is stronger and your radio should prefer it.

One thing that seemed to work for me was unscrewing the antenna. Got less interference from outside.
Also I prefer almond clusters. Mmm.

Peanut clusters are better.

Nut clusters aside...

Wouldn't unscrewing the antenna make it impossible to pick up any radio frequencies?

EDIT: I looked at the Wikipedia article for personal FM transmitters, and apparently removing the antenna actually works. Thanks for pointing that out, hcs.