My traveling experiences with Griffin Technology’s iTrip was fairly successful. The product basically works as advertised. It allows you to transmit your iPod songs via your car’s FM radio.

I will caution those of you that live in areas with heavy radio traffic (lots of stations) that your results may be very mixed. The instructions recommend that you find a station with just static, but the kicker is that the instruction manual also suggests that the bands to the left and right are also all static. I have to admit that is a very tall order! I never thought it would be so difficult to find static on the radio, but believe me it is a challenge.

Traveling from Columbus, GA to Orlando, FL I never found three consecutive bands of static, but I did find enough static that I could enjoy my iPod. In one case I managed to go 2+ hours without having to switch stations, but this was really the exception. I often found myself switching bands every 20-35 minutes, which was a pain in the neck. You have to switch because once the radio station starts picking up something (music, talk radio, bleed through from another band, etc) the music starts to sound scratchy with static.

To get the iTrip to function properly you have to tune your radio, then switch to the iPod’s iTrip playlist and select the correct radio station. Once the selected station starts playing you pause the “song” (iPod treats this as a regular music file) and wait for the iTrip’s led to blink three times before going solid. After that you start playing music as normal.

For the $35.00 price, the iTrip works as advertised. I cannot give it a full recommendation because it may not work well in heavily congested areas (lots of stations with little to no static), and because it is a cumbersome process to switch stations (music files) while driving. Still, the iTrip did what I wanted it to do – allowing me to listen to my music library on my iPod while traveling to Disney. Your mileage may vary.