This week's exciting mind-numbing adventure in the Random Access Thought for the week ending July 5th takes My Number One And Only Son Zachary and me into the bull rushes at Kiwanis Park near Rotterdam Junction for this year's big Amateur Radio Field Day 2008. The Schenectady Museum Amateur Radio Association quickly set up shop at the park's picnic pavilion, scattering dipoles and G5RVs all over the place, along with a massive tri-band Yagi for 10, 15 and 20 meters. Antenna cables and feed lines curled and snaked everywhere HF rigs were in command on the picnic tables, their attendant networked INTEL logging devices standing alongside.
Out in the grassy meadow, a cranky portable generator with a largely disagreeable 60 Hertz dialect chattered and rattled on. On hand were Mike KB2VQS, Tim WA2QAC, Mike VE2XB, Becky KC2BYZ and a cast of thousands to not only participate in the radio event but also to feast on the huge food larder car-lifted in from the local superette.
As always, when attending these sorts of events, I brought along my trusty cheap $49 dollar RadioShack analog cassette tape recorder: Model Number CTR-121, Catalog Number 14-1128, custom(?) manufactured in China. Plugged into the machine was my equally cheap RadioShack $20 dollar desk microphone: Model Number Not Specified, Catalog Number 33-3025A, custom(?) manufactured in Mexico with a third party wind screen I appropriated from a call completion telephone operator's headset.
Out in the grassy meadow, a cranky portable generator with a largely disagreeable 60 Hertz dialect chattered and rattled on. On hand were Mike KB2VQS, Tim WA2QAC, Mike VE2XB, Becky KC2BYZ and a cast of thousands to not only participate in the radio event but also to feast on the huge food larder car-lifted in from the local superette.
As always, when attending these sorts of events, I brought along my trusty cheap $49 dollar RadioShack analog cassette tape recorder: Model Number CTR-121, Catalog Number 14-1128, custom(?) manufactured in China. Plugged into the machine was my equally cheap RadioShack $20 dollar desk microphone: Model Number Not Specified, Catalog Number 33-3025A, custom(?) manufactured in Mexico with a third party wind screen I appropriated from a call completion telephone operator's headset.
The cheap $49 dollar cassette machine is actually not a bad device to use for in-the-field day recording. The audio is doable and can be sweetened with post production software. There are two principal negatives though. First, like most cassette machines, this unit has an AGC, an automatic gain control. When the focus being recorded is close, ambient background noise is minimized. But if the target is distant, or these is no close-in audio, the gain on the background is quickly increased. Also, if your subject speaks slowly, there will some pumping. This AGC thing can be useful when grabbing more distant effects. I have captured helicopter and thunder sounds with this machine and the audio was OK. Again, any such crude audio can be scrubbed, cleaned and sweetened in post. If I had the money, I would be using a Nagra.
The second idiosyncrasy is a big annoyance. The clever design engineers at RadioShack felt an analog tape counter was essential and the user can certainly hear the counter when using the internal microphone which manifests itself as an endless click-click-click on the tape which is why an external pickup is necessary. But this same effect can also show when the cassette machine is placed on the same surface as the external microphone, especially if the surface is made of wood or plastic. The click- click-click is amplified into a much more resonant THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. This same amplification through wood or plastic is occasionally observed in some restaurants and pubs when a careless patron blooders into their chair and the resultant sound resounds throughout the entire establishment.
Despite these issues, the cheap $49 dollar RadioShack analog cassette tape recorder custom(?) manufactured in China is quite useful. And useful it was, because in keeping with standard Random Access theory, I focused on areas most other reporters would pass over or not even see. In this week's Random Access Thought, I not only touch on the obvious but also give attention to an on-site home brew Porta-Potty...home brew! Since this is Field Day, innovation is key because the public outhouse located near the pavilion at Kiwanis Park is an exercise in government sponsored abandonment and a subsequent return to nature. No toilet paper. 
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