Flying with an external video camera
I bought an Aiptek HD digital video camera on Amazon.com recently. Just for fun I strapped it to the right-main landing gear of my 172, basically adjacent to the wheel hub. I wanted to do a test flight like this to see if the video was watchable and whether there were any problems from vibration, wind, &etc.
Much to my surprise it worked just fine! The only problem was that I underestimated how far the main gear "sinks" when the weight is taken off of it, so the camera ended up with about a 15 degree right-tilt while in flight.
The flight was rather mundane, I was just hopping over to Madison (52A) for gas at dusk. I sped up the cruise portion of the video to make it shorter. Also, there's no audio. I plan to try and use this technique to make some more interesting videos in the future.
Much to my surprise it worked just fine! The only problem was that I underestimated how far the main gear "sinks" when the weight is taken off of it, so the camera ended up with about a 15 degree right-tilt while in flight.
The flight was rather mundane, I was just hopping over to Madison (52A) for gas at dusk. I sped up the cruise portion of the video to make it shorter. Also, there's no audio. I plan to try and use this technique to make some more interesting videos in the future.
you could use durable CF cards in this, and some accelerometers as a ghetto black box.
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