Equipment

Comfort is essential for good observations. Cold and damp nights are at best unpleasant for the unprotected observer, and at worse can be very dangerous if prolonged exposure to conditions like these occurs. Ordinary things can help here. You might find the following useful:

• a deck chair, camp bed, or air mattress
• a sleeping bag or blanket (even in summer)
• warm clothes: not tight-fitting ones, many thin layers are better than a few thick ones as the air trapped between the layers is a good insulator
• pillows to incline the observer's head if lying on an air mattress or camp bed
• a ground sheet to protect bedding
• a cover to keep the dew and/or frost off bedding and equipment
• food and drinks to consume during observing breaks; do not have hot drinks - they dilate the blood vessels and make you feel colder.

The actual observing equipment consists of:

• an accurately set watch (ideally a digital one or a radio-controlled watch which is kept precise by a long-wave broadcasting signal)
• a dim red torch
• two pencils (at least)
• a portable cassette tape recorder or a roll of paper

A few recommendations may help to prevent malfunctions of the tape recorder during the observation. It should be easily usable in the dark and should have a one-touch recording button preferably. Do not use the pause switch since this is generally very small and the handling is unreliable. Moreover, the recorder may slowly decharge the battery when set to paused recording. The use of a voice actuator is not recommendable either as the first syllables may be lost before the tape starts running, and you cannot check if the device is really recording, without looking down. If the sensitivity of the microphone can be changed, adjust it to its maximum value. Recorders storing the time of speaking can be very helpful, however, note that it may take the recorder some 30 seconds until the complete time information is stored on the tape.