Worked on this yesterday. Bought a fiberglass shelled full face helmet with visor mounts at a local retailer (didn't want to compromise my $400 helmets). Went to the local blacksmith for some aluminum scrap, drilled, tapped, cut to fit an old aluminum framed tennis racket (matched the curve of the helmet, the racket ends attached to the visor mounts), stuck on some industrial strength velcro, and a bungie safety to keep straps from flapping.
When it was all done, I went up to our bathroom and reversed the screen to see where it captured, adjusted the metal plate so it basically saw what I saw. The next big test may come this afternoon (if the wind abates), I'll huck myself off the hillside and record the flight.
[QUOTE=Murrelet;2915]I'll huck myself off the hillside and record the flight.QUOTE]
Yeah! you have my kind of "can do" attitude about things, but where can you find a blacksmith these days. do you live out in horse country somewhere?
I did my first and only flight out on a beach in California about 30 years ago. Was fun, but even sand is hard to land on the wrong way. I'd never go off a cliff like I imagine you do. Can't wait for footage.
I live and fly on a small island in the Georgia Straight, west coast of Canada. I was up for one of my early flights a couple of years ago and saw a beautiful sand bar where none should have been. As the wind abated I decided to land on it. I went up to my knees in rotting herring roe, sure looked good from above. Sure stunk my gear up for a couple of months!!
A blacksmith here is not uncommon, most of these islands have at least one, lots of hobby horses need new shoes, resident's need gates, and they sell their iron sculptures/handicrafts throughout the summer.
The pic shows me flying just above launch (double click on it), pic taken at about 800', usually I get to 1500' from the 60' ASL launch, longest fight was 6hrs, mostly I do 2 hrs, come down for a snack and a pee then back into the air. The ridge the pilot took this pic from is about a mile long, and rises about 500'.
Finally got a flight in yesterday afternoon, and got about 6 minutes of footage before I second guessed myself, thinking I hadn't turned the cam on (I had) so I turned it off!!!....Me dumb or what?
First obvious result is, it REALLY needs the WA lens. Second result is the need for some kind of major wind damper. And third it needs a format method of aligning the camera to eye. As the cam is on top of my head, this gets a little tricky. I have it pretty close, but during the flight the helmet moved down on my brow, lowering the alignment, so shots I thought I had weren't there, just short.
Head movement was scatty at the beginning, then I settled down, just didn't realize how much I turn my head getting the neccesary visual info. Of course the eagles came up to fly with me AFTER I had shut off the cam, so those shots evaporated into thin air...ah..... so to speak.
Captured in Vegas and that was a real chore, with many recaptures, until it worked. Seems the sound from the wind had a huge draw on resources and it wasn't until I unplugged the firewire from one port (on the front of my computer) and placed it into the firewire port on my old Pinnacle card, that it finally could handle the load. (I had said that this was my sound card. I started to think about that, and climbed back under the desk to see if I was indeed in the sound card. No, I was in an old capture card from Pinnacle, right above the sound card. Sorry for the mislead.)
That might help someone else who edits with an older machine, try your firewire plug in the computers various firewire ports to find the best result. I captured a low noise clip (it had no wind sounds) with no problem in the original port.
Hopefully I'l have something to post in the next week, as time allows.
HV20 Helmet Cam
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