Nature listeners:
As you may recall, we left him headed for western Mexico. What he never
said was: on this trip I am tired of the HHB weight and it locking up at
critical times, I think I'll just take my son's MX-N1 at 1/25th of the weight.
Well, the whole trip was spent touring as tourists do, except on day when
we hired Sr. Alfredo Herrera, who can be reached through his web
site http://www.discoverpacifictours.com/ or by email
at . He does whale watches and fly-fishing tours, as well
as morning bird trips. Alfredo was terrific!
Nancy and I met him around 7:30 and took a public bus south of Puerto
Vallarta to a village called Junta de los Veranos. We then walked east on
the main dirt road, trying to see and hear whatever presented itself. NB:
Because of Sony's habit of waking up in the automatic record gain mode, I
made each recording and only used the [pause] between cuts. THIS IS A BIG
MISTAKE! After about 20 or thirty cuts, we will never know exactly, and
well before the end of the free space on the MD, the recorder locked up. I
lost sound without warning in the headphones and when I looked at the
display it said: TOC EDIT.
Five minutes later it still said TOC EDIT.
Ten minutes later it still said TOC EDIT.
I tried pressing [STOP]. I tried removing the single AA cell booster
attached on the bottom, I tried ejecting the disc - nothing happened at
all. It still said TOD EDIT.
At this point the endemic Blue Mockingbird was not only calling, but it
came out of hiding -- [Alfredo: "It never does that, it was two months of
hearing it before I EVER saw it clearly!!"].
So I pulled out the rechargable battery and the display went blank. You
guessed it. The TOC had never written to disc even once. On firing it up
again and looking at the contents, not one single recording showed from
that morning at all. I removed the disc, set the write-protect tab, said:
"I'll deal with YOU later!" and put in a new disc.
By now, the Blue Mockingbird had disappeared but could still be heard, so I
got some sounds on the new disc. I tried to get sounds of all the species
we had just seen and heard as we walked back: Yellow-winged Cacique, San
Blas Jay, Sinaloa Wren, Stripe-headed Sparrow and Brown-backed Solitaire,
but mostly (it now was 10:30 AM) they were silent. A Golden-cheeked
Woodpecker did call once and I got it. Now I was pressing [STOP] after
each cut, and watching the TOC EDIT briefly go on then clear properly.
So when I got home, I used the HHB Portadisc to recover a single disc-long
TOC entry, as per Paul Isaac's (2004-02-12) instructions! Thank you very
much! The only trouble I had doing it was getting the damaged disc into
the machine - it takes a little practice to press on the disc while
operating the big white gear, hidden pretty much under a bunch of other
gears. I didn't want to mangle the nylon teeth . . .
So I recovered 95% of the data - it was written to disc, but without a TOC
you cannot read it. Wit the new, artificial TOC I got to dig out all the
sounds possibly except the very last ones. I call the method the "one
track mine".
So the trip was in many ways a great success. We enjoyed the area a lot,
and the weather was fabulous - 68 every night, 78 every day, a misting of
rain, and a good time socially. And a Mexican bus ride, if you've never
taken one, 30 miles for a dollar, will make you forget any minidisc
problems! Blue-footed Boobies ain't bad, either.
Tech summary: The N1 has the good feature that you can alter the record
level WHILE recording, by just turning the star wheel down (to increase the
gain) or up (to decrease the gain). Just don't trust the TOC to behave
itself unless you [STOP] every few cuts. And after a while you almost get
used to: holding the bar up while flicking the REC button to the right,
pressing the star wheel in once, scroll down two notches, press the star
wheel in again, scroll down once, press it again and your ready to record
in a trice, just press the bar UP once to begin. [whew!]
sending my best,
Marty Michener
Hollis, NH
Graminoids - a new book for naturalists who have never been able to
identify sedges and grasses.
http://www.enjoybirds.com/HomePublishing/PubHome.htm#gram
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