I've dabbled a bit with field recordings myself. I use a Sanyo ICR-B175NZ stereo recorder (encodes directly to mp3; can 64kbps which is fine for voice, but also 128kbps). This model is apparently discontinued now, but I picked mine up at a Radio Shack in Canada about a year ago for about CDN$70 or so.

I also use a pair of binaural microphones from The Sound Professionals (http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cg...item/SP-TFB-2). They are amazing and give true surround sound staging.

If you want, just pick up a cheap minidisc recorder and use that for field recordings. This is what I used to use to get the best sound quality, but there is some loss unless you can transfer into a high-spec audio card on your computer.