Chief Ben Caruthers was always inventive at getting what we needed. Since we never had any money for extras, it was usually by horse trading. Or diverse means.
He cut a deal with the FBI's Miami office to use our pistol range. In return, they furnished us with practice ammo. And they were very liberal with their free training for the NPD.
There was other stuff Ben arranged for us. Our Detective was the photographer, too. And the Crime Scene dude. It was one of the things you had to learn to do when you were assigned that job. Take the photos, develop them, and print them. Trouble was our equipment was old and terrible and there was no place to get proper training.
Ben made some deal with Kodak--don't know what--and soon I received personal lessons from a Kodak teacher, an enlarger appeared out of nowhere, and I had enough free film to open a photo store.
When Ben heard about shotgun mikes, he had to be more inventive. A shotgun mike would allow a person to listen to conversations from a long distance. Great for surveillance! It was a bundle of different length tubes, that you aimed at the target. The tubes resonated at different frequencies and sucked the sound in, where a small amp sent it thru earphones to the listener. We had to have one but they cost thousands. So Ben went to work.
We scrounged up a schematic out of a magazine. Ben found an aluminum supplier in town who almost gave us the tubing. We used a cheap Radio Shack solid state amp and mike. Having experience in electronics, I went to work putting it together. When it was finished, we went over to Cambier Park to test it.
Worked great! If you wanted to hear birds. We could hear a Purple-Butted Burbler a 100 yards away. People conversing? Nothing. I went back and checked the plans. That's when I found the magazine was a bird watching rag. It was supposed to heighten bird sounds. Finally, by adjusting tube lengths, we got it to work on human voices.
But, there were times when the clandestine conversations of surveillance subjects were interrupted by the tepid tweeting of a Tufted Titmouse. Or whatever avian happened to be a little off-key that day.
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