I have had a look at http://jukuu.com. As you say, once one knows enough grammar, plus an ability to parse, the Japanese sources of reference can be better understood.
I keep trying. Maybe one day I shall cross the barrier.
I guess that Jim will be closing this discussion down before long, so I shall take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation for your time and your explanations.

1) By the way, I don't mean to suggest that に送ったかわからんからな is "well beyond your level".
2) One more thing -- I was going to suggest that 日当たりのいい could be added to the Tanaka corpus rather 
than EDICT, but I see that it's already there in a slightly varied form, and that example sentence 
comes up on Jim's site when you search for 日当たりのいい ~
彼らは日当たりのよい家に住んでいる。
They live in a sunny house.

One place you can go to check phrase fragments is jukuu.com
If you go there and click on "日英" above the input box, you can search for Japanese-English bilingual 
example sentences.
In the case of かわからん there are no examples because the corpus is unfortunately too small, but in 
*principle* it's a useful tool.
If you click on 中日, however, you *will* find Chinese-Japanese bilingual example sentences containing 
かわからん:
e.g. この女は素顔でもとてもきれいなんだから，もしちゃんとめかしたらどんなにきれいになるかわからんよ。
这个女人净脸儿已经就很好看，要是打扮出来更不知道多漂亮！
These examples remind me that かわからん doesn't necesarily mean "don't know whether". In the example 
here it means "don't know (how beautiful she will become)" and in general, Xかわからん means "don't know 
the answer to the question Xか". 
But there are literally millions of such phrase fragments that might be useful to a novice, and I don't 
know whether EDICT attempts to document them. I would have thought it would be better to develop a 
better bilingual corpus of example sentences.
If you had such a corpus, there would be pleanty of examples of sentences containing かわからん, and they 
would be translated as 
- don't know whether ...
- doesn't know how ...
- won't know why ...
and so on
But really, no reference can help you if you don't know enough grammar and you're reading well beyond 
your level.

EDICT does have an entry for わからん, so all the elements were there in the dictionary, yet you 
weren't able to parse the phrase, because you don't have enough experience with reading and/or you 
lacked grammatical knowledge. If EDICT had an entry for かわからん "don't know whether" then you might 
have been able to work out the phrase better. But I don't believe it's the business of a dictionary 
to define phrase fragments like that. Although you perceive EDICT to be lacking in "helpful phrases", 
I think you are expecting too much of a dictionary. There is no substitute for becoming becoming more 
familiar with the language -- knowing the words and sentence structures. That's how you can get to a 
place where you can parse and comprehend.

Many thanks for that. I managed to get to "was it sent to (somewhere), because I don't know"

(plus the emphasis with "な")

However,I was not certain whether I had missed some subtle different outcome, eg, in your confirmation you are adding the "whether or not" which removes the more positive nature of my conclusion.

Anyway, I guess the inclusion of the above headword will depend upon an editor's direction of thinking. Hopefully it will be positive in favour.

Again, many thanks.

It's "...に + 送った + か + わからん + から + な。" in case you didn't work it out.
...に + 送った + か = "whether or not sent (it) to ..."
わからん is a contraction of わからない -- "don't know"

Richard, I am obliged for your comments. One of the obvious difficulties with Japanese for the beginner is knowing where a definitive collection of kanji and/or kana begins and ends. Whilst this is generally obvious to the experienced user of Japanese, the novice struggles.

In English, and many other languages, each word is a word and when one looks up an entry or a sample sentence in the Oxford English Dictionary, one knows the definitive word in question and all the other words [definitive also] can be looked up separately in the dictionary; if they are not already understood.

[I appreciate that you know this already so I am only stating it in order to make my point].

Now, for example, in Japanese, if one reads a string of kanji and/or kana in a book, eg, "...に送ったかわからんからな。".

Then in searching for meaning, one can pick off the "...に" and "送った" on Jim's site. Perhaps one can also pick of the "からな", but then one is left with "かわからん" ; without too much certainty as to whether the following "から" should or should not be included in some way. When nothing comes up on Jim's site or any other dictionary for "かわからん", the novice then has to experiment with knocking off bits at the end and/or the beginning until one gets some form of answer. When the novice does get an answer, the novice is not sure whether or not the right answer has been found. Save for having a Japanese teacher at one's elbow, the novice then has to proceed with uncertainty as he continues to read the text.

That is why I believe that every reasonable opportunity for the inclusion of strings like the suggested entry above should be included. As to the "room", I personally like using "something", but there seems to be a preference for positive examples being used in dictionaries.

Again, many thanks. Each step for me is a learning process and Jim's site is one of the best learning resources that I have seen.

Francis, I'm not an editor, so I'm not sure what will happen with this. One thing to be said in 
favour of an entry for 日当たりのいい is that it would enhance EDICT's usability in the reverse 
direction (English-->Japanese) to have a headword that means "sunny", if that's considered a 
priority. On the other hand, maybe it would be better to have examples of 日当たり usage in a 
separate database of example sentences, rather than in the dictionary proper. Let's see what the 
editors say.

I'd suggest "(of a room, or other location) sunny" 
because "(a room which )is sunny" 
a) makes it sound like 日当たりのいい is a noun -- some kind of room
b) is too specific -- doesn't indicate that it could be a rock, a garden bed, a house, or some 
other location

I agree entirely with your comments.

In the text which I was reading it was a piece of rock which was sunny [and good for sunbathing]. I used the “room” example because that seemed to come up frequently.

The point is this: are such examples of any assitance to the user of a dictionary who needs help on such matters. If one goes to big dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary, examples of usage are given as a regular course; usually to demonstrate history of usage and justification for inclusion of the main headword.

As for me, I would like to see all your examples included because such examples remove doubts from the mind of the novice. And, of course, there are many similar examples which are already included in Jim's dictionary and that, in my opinion, is what makes it so useful to a novice like me.

I know that some example sentences are included, but they are not always definitive enough to convey understanding to the novice who really needs the dictionary definition of the actual word or expression, etc..

Having done my own research, I am happy with my understanding of the main entry of "日当たり", but if I had come across the main entry above, my own research would have been easier.

1) It's not necessarily anything to do with a room:
庭に空きスペースがあります。3坪位で日当たりのいい場所です。
2) If a phrase such as 日当たりのいい is added, wouldn't you also need to 
add 日当たりがいい and 日当たりの悪い and 日当たりが悪い etc?
3)If you understand what 日当たり is, aren't all those phrases readily 
understood without any need for dictionary entries?

Kenkyusha gives an entry example following "日当たり (sunlight)". Google hits are high for both headwords. It was in the text which I was reading and the meaning is suited to context. Although it may be only a + b, because it is such a well used expression, you may wish to include it. I shall also submit a variation to "日当たり" to cover the reading "日あたり" which, of course, did not come up when I searched.