Parabolic Microphone                    

PHASE I

The Valhalla SongBird songs sounded so good, we looked for a way to make recordings. Dave poked around for a suitable means and came up with the setup shown. A small microphone, a large pottery bowl and a $30 EBay Sony MiniDisc Recorder.

PHASE II

The Bowl worked so well that I looked for a better bowl and tripod where we could leave the mike pointed at the treetops and tiptoe away.

Here's a closeup of the 2007  setup.


Here's two .wav file downloads of 1 minute recordings:

Birds at Valhalla 1.2 Mb

Birds @ Valhalla II 2.3Mb

Here's a spring 2009 mp3 recording of a symphony of frogs in the big pond. Recorded with the Version 4 dish setup

Frogs @ Valhalla 


PHASE III
Shot of 2008 setup
Surplus Microwave dish with mike mounted on a piece of plastic pipe. Note the used Sony Minidisk Digital Recorder 		 


Dave giving it a tryout. It still was not focusing the sound to the performance expected for a dish of this size.
 


Closeup of LM387 High Gain Microphone amplifier

 		PHASE IV


Here's a shot of the 2009 version. Modified with copper tubing to support the mike at the exact center of the focal point of the dish.

Download a .mp3 file of frog sound cacophony

Recorded May 9, 2009

 

  Back to Valhalla Oddities    Back to Projects     Back to Pictures

 

 

 

9-01-09