WOW Gene, you just scored more points then anyone has in a long time.
Not a chance for video. I tried that with the only guy with a video camera with my last maiden and he just can't seem to follow a plane even when it's slow and close with me telling him in advance what I was going to do. I had also thought about going out after 11 during the week to do it while I was alone. I probably won't do that though but unlike my old clubs no one on the lake bed cares if you are doing a maiden and will be flying right along with you. Most clubs allow a maiden flight to be done with no one else in the air.
At one point in time I had an advanced instructor that was ranked very high in Pattern. I had him inspect ll my planes and do the maidens for me. He had a very bad stroke and can no longer fly. That was a long time ago.
After that I looked around the club and discovered there were no other pilots that were all that much better then myself and sure no one I trusted with any of my planes, from that day forward no one has ever maiden-ed any plane of mine. Mater of fact I started being the go to guy for maiden flights. I really didn't like doing it for others so unless they ask me I sure won't volunteer.
However, if I build or assemble a plane for someone then I will do the maiden flight. We had one club member that was doing the maiden flights for people and when he crashed, it was always something wrong with the plane or set up. After that if I built of assembled the plane I did the trim flight, landed, handed the TX to the owner and got my money, from then on if the plane died it wasn't my problem.
I do have someone else help check out my controls though. I have them stand there and I say something like left turn ailerons and they make sure they are correct too. I also hold the plane at the CG and they stand off to see if it's OK. Then I fly it.
I don't ever get that sweat on my forehead or shake in my knees except on the maiden flight, I miss the feeling so I look forward to it. If something goes wrong it's my problem and I know I did everything I could to save the plane, if it was someone else on the sticks I would wonder if there wasn't something more to be done?
That nerve problem was always a lot more when I was flying big planes. There was so much money and time in a big plane, 40% and bigger really caused the shakes, anything scale is another one. The little Swoose, not so much.