Azden questions - range and quality

DAA, your experiances with the Azden are TOTALLY diff. than mine. My batts. are lasting a full day of hard calling easily. Temps range from teens early mornin to too damn hot mid afternoon. lol. Range of remote has been tested to approx. 150 yards. *Antenna up* Don't sell that antenna short, I'm thinkin it's sturdier than it looks. Lots of up and down cycles on mine without a hitch. I'm using no other amplification other than what the Azden has and have plenty of good clear sound using my old speaker horn off of my midrange JS512. I can actually I guess you would say *overpower* the little speaker with the Azden if I crank my player way up. But theres more sound than needed at lower volumes on my player that it's really a non issue. By the way, and I'm sure your aware of this, but the cord from the player to the transmitter is actually the antenna sending the signal to the reciever. Don't ask me how I know, but it DOESN'T like to be wadded up or wrapped around the player or the transmitter. lol It does weird things. Stretch that cord out and everything is much happier. I really like my setup, but would like to hear some feedback on the Nady if somebody tests it out. Larry
 
DAA - my experiences follow yours with the Azden – have you been following the Azden Mods II post on CG? The amp (pp) does help, although I think the included speaker on the PP sucks and changed it out for my old 512 LR speaker.

One way to increase the range (besides the antenna, which by the way is robust) si the lengthen the patch cable on the transmitter – it also acts as an antenna.
 
Larry, on the battery usage, I just don’t know. I put in brand new fresh copper tops the night before. And, like I say, after three stands the volume and range were down to unusable levels. The battery did “bounce back” later in the day, the way batteries tend to do when they warm up (the camera battery does that all the time). But it was definitely hurting in the morning. I did not know that the patch cord shouldn’t be wrapped around the transmitter or wadded up. But, I had it stretched out by happy coincidence anyway. On the antenna, trust me, if I tried to use it, it would be broken before too long. I’ve broken the antenna off my Foxpro remote transmitter several times. My Nady should be here in a day or two. I won’t be able to take it out for real hunting use for awhile, but hopefully I can at least take it outside next weekend and test the range, and get a feel for sound quality.

Catskin, yes indeed I have been following your mods closely. The longer patch cable is a good idea, I’ll try it for sure – the one I’m using now is 1’, the shortest one they had. I’ve got an amp on the way, probably won’t be here till next week though. It’s a small 7W amp from dckits.com. After talking to the guy who builds them, I decided to get a 12v gell cell to power it. Also have a 7W and a 15W (both RMS) horn speakers that should be getting here later this week. So I’ll have plenty of configuration options to play around with. After I settle on what I’m going to use, if I’m feeling froggy, I do want to try and do your power supply conversion. It really looks like the way to go.

- DAA
 
Me again DAA, hey I just had a thought. Could it possibly be your player that was having batt. problems and not the Azden the morning you were using it?
It seems to me that alot of these players may not be compatible with what we"re trying to do here as far as making them become a wireless predator caller. Might be worth a shot to try some different players just to see if some other brand or type works better. In my case I am using a D-Link digital MP-3/voice recorder and maybe I just got lucky, but I couldn't be happier with it. It's doing everything I had hoped for and more. The greatest thing about this little voice recorder is that anything I come across that I might want to try out as a predator call I just record on the spot. This lil thing is awesome as far as sound quality goes. Hell I ain't even used the MP3 feature on this thing because it records so clear. All my JS tapes I just played through my house stereo and recorded them onto the lil player. Just something to think about. Larry
 
Hey DAA & Scot,

I posted some information on the set up that I put together using the Nady DKW1 unit but somehow only the photo of the complete unit showed up. I had a heart attack and open-heart surgery the week before the PM hunt so I had to miss that, but now am recovering and have some time to continue my work on the E-caller I’ve been working on. I would be more than happy to share information or help where I can on your project.

I have no experience with the Azden unit, I decided to use the Nady unit because it cost only $65.00 and the receiver unit used a 12 VDC adaptor for it’s power source, this made it easy to use a 12VDC gel cell to power the receiver and an additional amplifier. The amplifier is a 5-watt mono amp that I bought from Canakits an online electronic kit seller it cost $11.00. I have used the Radio Shack speaker you see in the photo as well as a few other speakers, the “best” sound I “hear” seems to come from an 8-watt weatherproof speaker. The volume is quite good using any of the speakers I have tried and there seems to be little or no hum or other strange noises.

I am using an RCA RP 5007A digital voice recorder for my sound source; I got it on E-bay for $16.00. The recorder uses a memory card for data storage, either 4 or 8 MB, the 8 MB card will store 3 hours of sounds. The sounds can be organized in “files & folders” for a total of 99 selections, I really like the recorder it is easy to record, easy to use in the field, and I can change memory cards in an instant for a totally different set of sounds.

I have packaged the caller in a Pelican case, which is “over-kill” the box is heavy and costly but almost bulletproof and was handy. I am looking to re-package into something smaller lighter, and less costly. I also am looking at a small, light, inexpensive 15-watt speaker that I think will work real well with the unit. I keep the receiver’s antenna folded up inside the Pelican case and have had no problems with reception or range. I have only been able to get about 150 yards out from the receiver/speaker and have had perfect reception and volume, I think the unit is good for more range that is really practical or useful.

Let me know if I can answer any questions or, if needed, I can do some trial and report with my set-up for comparison purposes etc. The links below are to other photos of the current package.

Marcos
elalto@cox.net

http://www.momentoffame.com/snapshots/MomentOfFame/l16845.jpg
http://www.momentoffame.com/snapshots/MomentOfFame/l16847.jpg
http://www.momentoffame.com/snapshots/MomentOfFame/l16846.jpg
http://www.momentoffame.com/snapshots/MomentOfFame/l16842.jpg http://www.momentoffame.com/snapshots/MomentOfFame/l16843.jpg
 
Good stuff Marcos. Thanks for getting back to us. I was wondering what the picture was about. Glad to hear you are on the mend too!

Now you do have me wondering if maybe I should have looked around a little harder on the wireless unit. The Nady I ordered is configured more like the Azden. But having the 12V connection ready to go sounds nice. If I do end up using the 12V to power my amp (likely), I'll probably also try to get the Nady reciever running off it like Catskin has done with his Azden.

Glad to hear you like the 8W speaker too. From things Robb has posted in the past, that is what I suspected would be the case, so I've got a 7W all weather on the way (and a 15W, just to play with - they were pretty cheap).

- DAA
 
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