Wings of Williamsport Inc.
Model Airplane Club
Thursday, December 5, 2024
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  Aerial Videos  
  These videos are provided by me, club member (and Club Secretary) Tom Crocker.

They were created using the (relatively) new FlyCamOne2 that can be purchased from Hobby-Lobby for about $100.

As of this writing, these videos were acquired flying the camera in my Carl Goldberg Electra electric glider. This 20 year old glider had its battery door (on its belly) modified to hold the camera inside but allowing its swivel-able lens to peer out. The camera can be set to view straight down or looking forward up to about 45-50 degrees. Any more and the fuselage would be intruding in the top of the image.

I've been able to get about 20-25 minutes of recording time. I'm using a 2-gig byte SD memory card. There is no transmission of the image to ground. I don't know what I got until I land and play back the video on a computer. Therefore please realize that I can only estimate what the camera sees while flying.

I intend to provide more videos as I make them. I'm using YouTube to serve the videos. The quality of the original video is better than it appears here. The first video is 665 megabytes in its original form. The file I uploaded was edited down and compressed to make the upload tolerable. Click on the video itself after it begins playing and you will get the video on YouTube. There, you'll find a "watch in high quality" link that will improve playback quality if your internet connection and handle it.
 

This video was made at nearly mid-day with the camera pointing straight down at our club field on June 8th. Because of this, it features the aircraft's own shadow appearing early and late in the video when its closer to the ground.

The fun part is when the Electra's shadow comes up and "engulfs" the camera on landing!

Initially, the motor's noise may prompt you to turn down the volume or mute. Turn it down until I turn off the motor. I set the motor controller to brake the prop so that it wouldn't windmill. This allows you to hear the air passing over the airframe which gets a bit dramatic when I dive the glider at one point!

There is also a point in the video when the glider is flying along the tree line that borders the river. If you listen carefully, you hear a boat at dock revving its engine. I tried, but failed, to video this boat leaving its dock.
 
 While flying at the club field I heard the sound of a chopper coming from the east. I was quite high with the glider and over the river. I turned the glider hoping to capture the aircraft as it passed.

I got it! It was the Geisinger LifeFlight Helicopter flying low -- much lower than the glider.

The part with the chopper appears at 3:40 timestamp into the video.

 
Here are first attempts to capture Dave Bross' rocket launches. Pretty much a failure. There were some interesting video tidbits captured. So, here is what I got for your entertainment.  
Now I'm flying the camera on the 40 size Ace Cloud Dancer. The camera is seen here mounted forward facing, side facing and rear facing. Its mounted just to right of the port landing gear under wing. This plane is a low-wing tail-dragger.

I tried using streamers and it worked fine w/o affecting the control of the plane. The single streamer sited to the tail wheel is 66' long.

The dual-streamers are tied to the wing tips and are a bit less than 20' long.

In this video I intercut scenes from different flights to show, for example, a landing or takeoff  looking forward, side and rearward.
 


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