This page updated: September, 2006

Microphone

• Question: How is that done?
• See G. Kunkel Bird songs and Microphone building for the original version of the Microphone, including diagrams and an AVI video.
• Answer... The microphone is built using the 3/4" plastic pipe joiners in the center with a wooden base built on the back. A 4" round plywood (1/4" thick) is in the pipe connection with the reflector (and a plastic lid in front of the reflector to distribute force). The plywood base is bolted onto the round plywood and a triangular piece of wood (3"x3"x?, 1.5" thick(a 2x4 3" long)) inside the base bottom is bolted onto the parabolic reflector. The base is 2" wide at the top (2.5" with the inside notched out around the round plywood) and 7" wide at the bottom, 9" tall and the parabolic side was made cutting out a piece of cardboard until it fit the reflector. It is important that the space at the top and the hole in the side are there to allow placement of the microphone wire. The base base is a 1x4x7"... read 3/4 x 3.5 x 7". The base back is 1/2 x 1.5 x 9" between the sides of plywood (there is a .4" space between the pipe and the base back, and a 1" hole drilled into the base side). The handle is something left over and the microphone is one that came with a computer program... held in place with a rubber band and snaked through the base. The steel rods holding the microphone are drilled through the reflector and epoxied into the wood base and the sides of the plastic pipe. The nosecone reflector is a liter soda bottle stuck inside a piece of plastic pipe joiner stuck on-over a plastic 3/4" pipe epoxied onto a piece of metal bolted onto the 2 steel rods.

• Question: connection contacts?
• Answer... All wood-to-parabola metal contacts are glued using a gutter sealer that remains flexible. All wood-wood contacts are glued using construction adhesive. The tripod mount is a 1/4" wood-working metal nut... the outside is like a washer with the hole extending to be the nut. The outside edges are cut and bent to form prongs to grip the wood... i glued it into a hole i drilled into the base... carefully to not fill the nut with glue.
• The triangle wood inside the base is bolted to the parabola and the circular plywood is squished to the parabola. The sides of the base are bolted to the circular plywood, screwed into the triangle, and into the (.5x1.5) back of the base between the sides. The base base is screwed into the base-back and the triangle wood at the edge of the parabola.
• Everything is painted with a bluish-gray latex primer and will probably get spray-painted with a flat black/green camo someday.