This pandemic has affected us all in so many different ways, but the larger alteration of everyday life falls upon all kinds of public gatherings. Some of them, like movie theater showings, large music concerts, restaurant outings or similar leisure activities can wait until this is over, but there some that can’t, in particular religious ceremonies. But to be able to carry them out in a safe manner for all involved will require some ingenuity, improvisation and technology.

Drive In Church Services
When all this started and churches were prompted to close their doors, a lot of people had the same idea: “what if we use our parking lot and people stay in their cars during the ceremony?”. While at first this might seem like a great solution there are some technological barriers that need to be overcome to make it happen. The exponential factor of how many worshippers will need to be served makes it mandatory for them to provide their own audio devices, and the church would only need to purchase equipment to broadcast it. So, everyone’s minds turned to car radios.

The idea is that the ceremonies will be transmitted on a radio signal and all the participants inside a single car can listen to it by just tuning their radio to the appropriate frequency. That would be great and relatively inexpensive. The problem is that would also require a license by the FCC. You see, car radios work within the spectrum of commercial FM frequencies, and to broadcast in one you need to have approval by the FCC, since these are usually reserved for regular radio stations. Additionally, there's two kinds of FM transmitters that you may come across online for purchase and neither will provide a feasible solution: the assistive listening transmitters that work on a frequency range outside of what car radios can pick up and require special receivers, or FM transmitters that are not FCC approved and thus illegal, which if used to broadcast to car radios might incur in fines for up to $10.000 per day.

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