Red Green eat your heart out!

LAST EDITED ON Nov-22-04 AT 08:53 AM (CST)
 
Thought I needed to do something to give Gary Weaver a little competition although it's not quite as much on the edge as some of his projects. I got to wondering a while back about how to go about videotaping a flight from the pilot's perspective. Here's what I came up with. The basic components are a cheap biking helmet from Goodwill and a compact videocamera. Sighting is accomplished through a small O ring glued to the lens of a cheap pair of sunglasses. All of the taping is done with the camera zoomed all the way out and as long as you keep the plane within or fairly close to the sighting ring it stays in frame very well. I discovered you do have to move your head a lot more than normal to keep the plane lined up. I also found out it was hard to tighten up the straps enough to keep the helmet with all of the added weight from shifting around during flight, so I usually just pull the helmet stap down with my left hand while flying. It takes a few flights to get accustomed to all of the extra weight on your head but make for some interesting video. The camera easily picks up any comments you make while flying too which can be entertaining at times.

Gee, Elwyn: I would've tried to strap the camcorder to my handle before I put that thing on my head.

You're a nut, but I luv ya!

Great minds think alike. I bought a bicycle helmet with exactly the same intentions more than a year ago to vidoetape BBQB flights to offer convincing proof that it could turn with the best of 'em. It is still gathering dust in the garage, but I do intend to get around to trying it.

I appreciate the information on the operation of this lashup. Maybe it will help that I have a lighter second camera. I planned a wire "gun sight" to help frame the airplane. I was/am more interested in "beauty" shots than videoed patterns. I am also skeptical of just how much distraction I can tolerate without endangering my airplane.

LAST EDITED ON Nov-20-04 AT 08:11 PM (CST)
 
I originally had a bendable wire frame attached to the helmet. It hung down in front of your eye but it had to be had to be realigned every time I brought out the camera. With the o ring on the sunglasses everything lines up perfectly every time. Sometimes when holding the strap down to keep everthing stable the camera will get pulled a little off kilter with the horizon. One of the newer super compact cameras would probably lighten things up enough to make things a bit easier and do away with the need for having to pull down on the strap while flying. If you are just going to tape the plane flying mostly level it will probably make things even easier. The few patterns I've taped had very high bottoms although most of my patterns are fairly high anyhow.

Elwyn!.....

It's good look Dude!......

Dangerous Fashion Statements and Nitro Fumes!....Hib

LAST EDITED ON Nov-20-04 AT 06:56 PM (CST)
 
Elwyn had his bullseye glasses laying on a table out at our flying field today. As he was walking up to the table, the wind blew the glasses off the table, just as he walked up to it. Elwyn stepped on them, breaking off one of the earpieces. He flew again with them afterwards, but they were a bit loose!

LAST EDITED ON Nov-20-04 AT 07:49 PM (CST)
 
DE, could you make Elwyn a nice trophy? Sorta' like those nice VSC trophies you make? It could have a camera with a battery in it that would flash in his eye or shock him or something like that! He is very deserving of such an award. One of a kind.....well, no, there's two of'em. I forgot about Bob Reeves there for a second. Have ya'll sat in your new club house in the rain yet? Or snow? It's going to be great! All the best to all you Okies, dale g

Elwyn will receive a trophy at the next club meeting. It is awarded monthly and is called the "Blue Max".

We had a clubmeeting at the clubhouse and used the electric heaters; they work fine.

It's raining today. I'll go out to the field if Elwyn or someone else will!

>Gee, Elwyn: I would've tried to strap the camcorder to my
>handle before I put that thing on my head.
If you just want to tape the plane going around level you can do pretty well just holding the camera up to your eye as long as you're not zoomed in too much. Trying to track a plane through maneuvers is a whole lot trickier though.

Hey Elwyn; That is really cool! To do the Red Green thing, You need to do an over head eight and have the weight of the camera toss you on you back. Of coarse you will need Dee there to film it on another camera. And, isn't there some way you could have incorporated a little duct tape in the camera helmet fixture. I'll be watching for you on PBS.

And, isn't there some
>way you could have incorporated a little duct tape in the
>camera helmet fixture?
Actually there is a bit of duct tape on the chin strap!

At the W/C they were doing a lot of filming for TV, Discovery channel I think.
Mike Wilcox and Mark Rudner flew a match one afternoon, and Mike had a camera stuck to his helmet to get a pilots eye view.
Does anyone know if we will ever see any of the footage shot at the W/C on TV?
Pat MacKenzie

Looks great Elwyn, does this answer the age old question, "Does your head follow the plane or do the eyes follow it"? You guys keep up the great work/play you are doing. Would like to get one of the dvd's of the plane mounted camera. -DOC Holliday

LAST EDITED ON Nov-22-04 AT 09:03 AM (CST)
 
I found out you have to move your head a lot more than normal using the helmetcam in order to keep everything lined up. It is especially noticeable at the edges of maneuvers where you would normally just move your head a little and follow the plane with your eyes the rest of the way. Last fall I tried filming a flight while holding the camera up against the side of my head which worked better than I thought. Unfortunately the plane would always go out of frame on the outside edges of some maneuvers.

Elwyn,
Great rig, but something you guys may want to try is a remote lens on the helmet attached to the camer on your hip. That's how the great bike riding videos are done. The lenses are mounted on hte fairing with the camer actually in a tank bag or under seat compartments. The lensesrun a couple of hundred bucks, but would remove all the "overhead"
Bare

The lightweight lens sounds like the way to go. It would have put the project several hundred dollars over budget though.

>The lightweight lens sounds like the way to go. It would
>have put the project several hundred dollars over budget
>though.

Where is the fellow that had the camera on the plane? Why not use his camera? DOC

>Where is the fellow that had the camera on the plane? Why
>not use his camera? DOC

Because nobody in the club has a battery operated VCR. We could run a cable to a VCR outside the circle but Elwin may get it tangled up in his feet

All kidding aside, we do have the wireless camera and Elwin knows he is welcome to come get it and play to his hearts content. I haven't really discussed this with Elwin so am guessing the reason he didn't think about the wireless system.

When we were playing with the in-flight video we didn't have power at the field and I had to do some creative equipment lash-up's in order to get a monitor and VCR working. Now that we have power at the club house it would be pretty easy.

Of course this is provided I can find the darn thing and all the parts, still trying to get organized from the big move

LAST EDITED ON Nov-24-04 AT 07:33 PM (CST)
 
I never thought about the little camera we used for the in flight video. I've got a feeling it's fixed field of view might be a litle bit wider than what I was looking for and the bigger camera, while a bit cumbersome, has sound and probably has better picture quality.

Your camcorder will have better picture quality.. When we bought the little camera I picked a fairly expensive camera because of the resolution spec but it is still short of a camcorder. I noticed the systems advertised in Model Aviation do not give a resolution spec and would guess they are 300 lines at best, most of the $100.00 color cameras are only about 250. Our little camera at 400+ lines isn't bad for what it is but your camcorder is over 500.

WARNING WARNING. If you see one of these in your neighborhood , Hide your children , Lock your doors and call Sheriff De Hill at BR-549 We have had more fun watching Elwin flying with his cameras plus when he wears the helmet we get better reception on the TV in the Club House. JIM

I hope all of you won't give Elwyn too much flak. The guy is a professional photographer, and without his input, our model magazine pages would be almost empty of photos. So, keep it light and funny.

Dr. Spark

So far everything HAS been light and funny...except what you just said!

Very neat idea & picture!!!!

While it certainly is a goofy looking contraption it has been a lot of fun. You can probably get better video shooting from outside the circle but shooting from the center is just kind of neat. You don't get any doppler effect and you can add narration while you fly. I like it when you get up high and there are a lot of small white clouds zooming by.

Wow! Hey, could you adapt that to a GenIV night vision system so I can fly at night?

Think about it. The wind usually lays at night and everyone would fly under the same conditions.

Would it look something like this?