Recording equipment in saharan heat
 

Hello
I am going down south to Western Sahara and possibly Mauretania with basic sound recording equipment, that is minidisc, MD tapes, microphones. The furthest south I ve been so far was Marrakesh, so my question is - does it get much hotter further south? How could you compare Marrakesh in August to Mauretania ( especially coast ) in late September / October. Is this kind of heat dangerous for the minidiscs, any precautions you recommend?
I will be grateful for replies to my email karaiby@o2.pl, as I am on the road, and cant check all forums every time. thanks

Don't leave anything plastic in direct sunlight inside your car - otherwise most kit is fine.

Sam.


(sorry, not sent by email...!)

To be precise - I am going to hitchhike, camp a lot, sleep in places with little isolation from weather. I am igorant in many technical matters, and am not sure if the heat can do any harm to minidisc mechanism, and to the content of recorded discs.Its obvious I am not going to leave it out in the sun, but lets say in plastic box, wrapped in a jumper, and in the bag - that should be enough, what you reckon?

Your biggest problem is going to be the grit of dust and sand which can easily get into the sensitive mechanisms of a MD recorder, and into the minidisc sleeves. Do not put any of this equipment into plastic bags, as the static electricity will keep sand grains in the bag. Use somethink like a chamois to wrap your stuff. There are some terrific strong boxes made by Otter (Otterbox) that give excellent protection for your equipment.
The heat will affect you more than your equipment.

Personally, I would take one of the large-capacity MP3 players/recorders, such as here:

http://www.nomadworld.com/products/

They're intended primarily as MP3 players, but the better ones will record. I think the JB3 will record MP3 format on the fly, but if you want to record in "CD-quality stereo" (wav format), you'll still get an amazing 34 hours of recording on the 20Gb model (I think!). No discs to swap or get scratched, just one self-contained, compact unit. Pretty amazing, I reckon! If quantity was more important, with a slight compromise on quality, good quality MP3 would give you 5-10x the time.

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ichapp.users.btopenworld.com

[This message has been edited by IanC (edited 22 July 2003).]