Now some words about the equipment I have the pleasure to use over the 23 years or so I have been recording. My first recorder was the German made Revox B77, a quarter-inch open reel, perhaps I shouldn't say this . . . but it still works today (As often happens when you say something like that) (September 2006) as good as the day I bought it in 1979. Apart from its high performance I liked it for its beautiful proportions and looks. In 1983 I bought the first of two of the German made 'Uher 4200 report' portable reel to reel recorders, in 1984 I got the second one. The first recorder is one of the grey colour models, the second Uher is one of the Brown machines. I think the 1983 model is the better built, they say that the 'Brown' version is electronically better. Can't say I have ever really noticed any difference in sound quality. I think the Swiss recorders, Stellavox and Nagra machines are of somewhat higher quality and even better looks but I could not afford them, but then looking back I think that the fairly small hobby-use I gave the portable recorders didn't really justify buying the hugely more expensive Swiss makes, even if I could have afforded them. I am delighted with the recordings I made on the Uhers and had I had better mics it is this that would have made the real difference. It is no use having the greatest recorder in the world if you use 'Average' performance microphones. In 1995 I bought a Sony portable DAT (Digital Audio Tape) recorder, the D-7. The only real downside to it was that after a few years it lost the ability to fast forward. A friend who has the same model has had the same problem with it. Otherwise it is a fine little recorder. It has now reached the end of its useful life after 9 years. I have brought along a Sony portable Minidisk recorder on my foreign travels in case the 'main' recorder malfunctioned, thankfully I have never needed to use it.    This year I bought the M-Audio 'Microtrack' recorder, this tiny machine records to compact flash memory cards and can record up to the 96Khz sample rate in 16 or 24bit. (A CD sample rate is 44,100 samples per second and a resolution of 16 bits). I begun with dynamic microphones, I soon found these to be not at all sensitive enough for birdsong work, so I soon bought a Sennheizer electrets mic of about twice the sensitivity, a year later I bought a second one for stereo (I knew nothing about matched stereo pairs at the time). It is only fairly recently that I have bought a pair of proper sensitive 48Volt capacitor mics, since then I have bought an even better quieter pair of similar microphones.