Clint,

Most of the SmartPhones out there have the capability of recording audio - I'd hate to see you go out and purchase a new unit when a $5-or-less application would do it for you!

Although my Nokia N900 has an audio-recording app I installed (a freebie), I rarely use that. Some phones make it difficult to plug in a patch cable to record audio that way, and prefer you to use the phone's mic element to do the recording. My phone has a 4- conductor 3.5mm (1/8") jack that is used for audio going in or out of the phone plus composite video output. I can plug standard earbuds or headphones with a 3-conductor 3.5mm plug into the jack, but would have to make an adapter if I wanted to use it to record audio off that jack. If I am not using a splitter to record audio (i.e., working ISS passes or anything not full-duplex), I will run the recording app and my audio recorder near the radio's speaker to have multiple copies of the audio. Plus the N900 phone app uses WAV as the native format, so I have to run those files through Audacity or some other program on a computer to convert them to MP3s.

The recorder I use for my satellite work (Sony ICD-PX820) has a USB cable, uses MP3 as its native recording format (4 different encoding rates, depending on the audio quality), and looks like a thumbdrive or external hard drive when plugged into a computer. I don't need to use any special software to transfer audio from the recorder to the computer, but the software that comes with it will convert audio between different formats including MP3 and WAV (the software is used to transfer recordings from other Sony recorders that do not present themselves to a computer as a USB drive). It has standard 3.5mm jacks for audio in and out, so my audio patch cables work fine with it. Much more convenient to work with than my phone with its app. Many other recorders have USB interfaces, use MP3 natively, and are not terribly expensive. More than $5, but you don't have to go too expensive to have something that has most or all of this functionality.

73!

Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/