It was my Fiance who spent most of the time in the field but I am her tech guy
and spent at least some time with her there so I can talk the most of the
details. Mics were 2 Sennheiser ME66 [four years], 2 ME62 [three years] and
some 3 self made mics for Parabolic dishes [four years]. Recorders were 2
Edirol R-09 [three years] and a 1 Fostex FR-2LE [two years]. Speaker for
playbacks were a Pignose Guitar amp [four years] and 2 Dean Markley GT1200
[three years]. The Parabolic dishes we used were the Telinga dishes with self
made mounts for my mics and self made mounts for Sennheiser ME62. Larger items
[amps and Fostex] were kept in dry bags [the kind you get at a kayak store]
smaller were kept in Ziplocs Silica was bought in a bulk quantity and put in
panty hose, larger amounts for large bags. Each summer they would see about 2
months in Monteverde Costa Rica, each day the items would be in the field for
6-8 hours. Living situation was nice there living
in a house so the gear did not go through so much stress. Peru is a different
situation. Each year 4-5 months living out of a tent, going from the foothills
where the Andes meet the Amazon to the tree line on the Manu road. Each day the
saw 6-10 hours of use and would spend most of the rest of the time in bags. All
of the the gear were the same items the entire time. The only failures were the
first years we had a minidisc recorder that was junk and had many different
failures and never came back to the field with us, after that year we added the
smaller amps, the Edirols and the Parabolic set ups. Both Edirols had the mic
input go bad once at some point [thankfully different field seasons], a well
established problem with these, both were fixed quickly when we got back to the
states and after being fixed did not repeat the issue. And one of the Telinga
dishes after four years became unusable with cracks along the edge and the
mount hole, [these also
see alot of use with undergrads when not in the field and the dish most likely
suffered from improper use by said undergrads]. Hope this helps
Aaron
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