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Re: Introduction

Subject: Re: Introduction
From: Walter Knapp <>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 12:34:22 -0500
From: Jeff and Crystal Smith <>
> 
> 
> 
> Thank you Walter for your comments.  Mostly I want to be able to record what 
> I hear and focus on.  The 600mm lens will take a long while to save up for.  
> A minimum of several years, maybe more.
>  
> My budget doubled on the second day of researching equipment.  I figured for 
> a few hundred dollars I could be up and running.... Duh!  So then it appeared 
> I could get by with a $600 budget, and as I read and studied more I figured 
> it would cost $800.

The problem with this hobby (and lots of others) is it's easy to spend 
money.

> Not sure what you consider close enough.  I'm figuring 50 yards away will be 
> common and a 100 yards maximum.  If a parabolic is what is required I was 
> considering the ME66, if that would be good.  And if I go this route, I'd be 
> very close to the $800 limit.  Waiting until April is not a bad thing and may 
> be worth it to go with the HiMD.  I did read the press releases on these.

I would consider those distances to be in the realm of the parabolic. A 
shotgun with lots of gain applied would maybe get stuff out there, but 
you have two things going against you there. The primary one is to get 
that much gain you will crank the walkman up full, and it's pre will 
produce a fair amount of self noise set like that. Not enough to stop 
you hearing the calls, but enough to be a problem for any commercial 
product. Assuming you overcame that, say with buying a pre, the ME66, 
while a good mic for nature recording, is not the quietest. With a quiet 
pre you would probably get into the self noise of the ME.

You need to get the sound level higher before it hits the mic. I'm going 
to suggest something that will probably horrify some, namely add a 
Telinga spare dish and rig a mount to use the ME as it's mic, pointing 
it toward the dish. That's not the traditional mic for a parabolic, but 
should work pretty well. You would want to make your mount so that you 
could easily take the ME out when you were close enough. That way one 
mic can be used in two ways. I've a small page on homemade parabolics, 
it's not on this design, but look and think about how you could do it 
with a ME.
http://frogrecordist.home.mindspring.com/docs/quickparabolic.html
Check on Doug's site for the price for the spare dish. The other 
advantage of this is if you went for a Telinga eventually, you would 
already have a spare dish.


> I am a big fan of Ebay!
>  
The poor man's friend. ME Too!

Walt




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