At 01:51 PM 9/4/2003 -0300, you wrote:
>Fascinating stuff, Marty.
>
>Before your e-mail arrived I left the Portadisc on Record/Pause with no mi=
c
>and the battery pack lasted 4 hours. I now have the Portadisc beside me as
>I type, with a second battery pack and recording with an MKH20 on phantom
>power. The battery life meter is fluctuating between 99% and 85% (it has
>now settled on 95% - whoops 90%). Disaster - now it's switched off
>completely - after 12 minutes! And the voltage of this battery set, which
>was 14.3V when I started is still 13.7V. It looks as if I shall be taking
>my old cassette recorder to Amazonia!
>
>I've now put the second battery pack back in the Portadisc. It showed 90%,
>fell immediately to 70% and then, when I started to record, switched off.
>
>I'll follow your suggestions to find out if I have a dud cell somewhere.
Either you have the first Portadisc with a short or other flaw, or I would=
bet one of the cells is dying early. We should ask HHb WHAT signal from the=
batteries causes the thing to actually decide to shut down.
As I said, good luck.
BTW I never take just one recording medium on any trip! When I first began=
the EnjoyBirds recording project, I was in Belize and I had two old
cassette recorders and a Sony RDAT. First the casseette mic input jack
broke with NO bang or provocation, so I could listen to it but not record,=
then I lost an entire morning on the RDAT, in spite of going back and
listening to recent tracks, because the RDAT could not take the
humidity. Pounds of moisture absorbing stuff and plastic bags never
brought it back or restored about six new bird species from that
morning. So I used an old radio shack minisette to record for the rest of=
the trip, and IT (my last resource) never failed me.
my best regards,
Marty Michener
MIST Software Associates PO Box 269, Hollis, NH 03049
EnjoyBirds.com - Software that migrates with you. http://www.EnjoyBirds=
.com
----------
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.512 / Virus Database: 309 - Release Date: 8/19/2003
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
|