timing belt question

[Phil Payne]

> Boy, and I thought -software- QA was a lousy task...
>
> Oh, Phil, before I forget, I was troubleshooting my Blaupunkt
> "thummer" remote and in the course of researching the issue(they
sent
> me the wrong remote) I found out that your nav unit has its very own
> thummer remote w/specific nav controls, if you were not aware.
> Probably even more useful on the nav unit than it is on just a
> regular radio.

It does indeed.

But we don't have the same FM environment that you have.

This whole subject fascinates me more than somewhat.  All of us accept
that the quattro system (permanent four-wheel drive in a normal
passenger vehicle) and a few other things that Audi came up with were
real leaps forward.  But car radios?

Almost.  Audi worked with Philips in the late 1970s and early 1980s on
a real world beater - the Philips MCC.  This was a radio with seventy
memories (remember - this is 1978) arranged in seven banks.  The first
six banks of ten memories each were assigned to buttons on the front
of the radio - P1 to P6.  The seventh bank was assigned to a
'Memolock' button - I think four FM, three medium wave, two long wave
and one short wave (49m band).

The idea is to programme all of the frequencies for your chosen
station in one bank, and then press that Pn button when you wanted
that station.  Ideal for Germany and the UK (if any UK citizens, don't
believe me, check out the actual number of different frequencies used
by the national R1-R4 transmitters).  Useless in the USA, but hey.

It was and is a wonderfully ergonomic design.  Usually you press a 'P'
button.  Turn the tuning knob slowly, and it fine tunes.  Flick it
round quickly, and it jumps across the band.  Press it, and it
auto-searches - the first pass through a band picks strong signals,
the second picks all of them. As a device for use by a busy driver who
wants trouble-free radio reception - it has no parallel on the planet.
Even now.

But - nobody buying an expensive car wanted a Philips car radio.  In
the states, it has to be Bose.  Over here, people push cars with Bose
systems over cliffs.  Here it has to be Blaupunkt - not a brand held
in high esteem in Germany.

I met with some Audi designers at Porsche Weissach in the early 1980s
(half socially) and heard the whole story.  So I bought one, and later
another.  Until I bought the TravelPilot, I'd done about 3/4m
kilometres with MCCs - they are ergonomic dreams and look like sh1t,
so they never get stolen.

 Now I have the TravelPilot.  I've programmed it with Radios 1 to 4
(local frequencies) on the first four buttons, and two local Sheffield
stations (Hallam and BBC Radio Sheffield) on the other two.  The upper
buttons are for instant navigation information and turning traffic
alerts on and off - I use neither.

I've discovered that the programming doesn't work as documented.  When
you programme a button, it seems to store not just the frequency but
also the station ID encoded with the signal.  Whatever - the
functionality is the same as with an MCC - I press a button for Radio
4 when leaving the house, and I don't need to touch the radio again.

The remote clips onto the steering wheel and uses its own internal
batteries to power an infrared link with a receiving button you insert
into the dash somewhere in front of it.  It looks neat.  But it's
non-stealth (a major drawback for me) and I also don't need it - I
hardly touch the TravelPilot once I'm on the move.

--
  Phil Payne
  http://www.isham-research.com/quattro
  +44 7785 302 803
  +49 173 6242039