[Fists] MP3 Player Tip

[Jeff Davis]

Friends.

I drive one hour each way to work everyday. I don't operate mobile from my
car. But I have recently picked up a handy little device that lets me get in
some code practice while driving.

These little MP3 players have gotten pretty cheap. I picked up a Rio400 at
Best Buy for $39 a few weeks ago. It is slightly smaller than a pack of
cigarettes and runs on batteries. It even came with ear-bud style
headphones. It has 64MB of storage so it holds hours of MP3 files. It
connects to my PC via USB for transferring files. I also noticed at least a
dozen other similar players but the Rio400 was the cheapest on the table.

The ARRL Web site makes W1AW code practice files available in MP3 format
from 5wpm to 40wpm. And they are new and fresh each week. I download a lot
of them and then transfer them to the MP3 player. Because there are no
moving parts in the player, the files never skip or mess up. It just makes
for nice code practice while you are driving, jogging, exercising, or riding
a bike. Like a tape player you can skip one file and select another, etc.

In addition, the weekly ARRL Audio News is now in MP3 format as is Newsline.
I download those each week and now make use of my "idle" drive time
listening to amateur radio news as well as code practice on the little MP3
player. This seems to be much more useful, and less expensive than the MFJ
code practice generator type devices.

Just thought I'd pass that info along. I've included links to places on the
Web to download MP3 files of interest.

http://www.arrl.org/w1aw/morse.html

http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/audio/

http://www.tapr.org/newsline/

--
Vy 73 de Jeff, N9AVG
FISTS #6641