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From: bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: miniature FM transmitters: bugs
Message-ID: <5898@buengc.BU.EDU>
Date: 24 May 90 16:46:42 GMT
References: <667@retix.retix.COM>
Reply-To: bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton)
Followup-To: sci.electronics
Distribution: usa
Organization: Boston Univ. Col. of Eng.
Lines: 43

In article <667@retix.retix.COM> paulk@retix.retix.COM (Paul C. Kim) writes:
>Where can I purchase a miniature FM transmitter?

The back of Popular Electronics, Radio Electronics, etc.

>Generally, how small do these get,

About the size of a dime for the ones in the magazines.
The smallest I've seen is about the size of a tantalum
capacitor, though.

>and how powerful?

100yds-100mi.  Don't expect much for under $10K.

>Are they easily accessable from a consumer's standpoint?

Back of a magazine for the larger ones, true-spook organizations
for the tiny ones (which cost a bundle, is why).

>What are the legalities involved?  Are they illegal to
>have in one's possession or are only specific ACTS of eavesdropping 
>considered illegal?

Eavesdropping is illegal regardless of the equipment
employed (or not); but, electronics is not a regulated
science, unless you're transmitting something or installing
house-wiring.  You can have it as long as you didn't steal it.

>How accurately are these little buggers detectable
>via some type of scanner?

Virtually instantaneously and always locatably, with a
spectrum analyzer and a nice array of antennae, unless they
use some sort of freqency-hopping crypto-tuner, which they
don't.  Unless you mean "what if they're turned off at the
time," in which case it takes not much more than a
high-tech grid-dip meter and sufficient proximity.

				--Blair
				  "At least, that's what I think
				   they want me to think, or so
				   I'm told..."