Hi Craig,

First Person View models.....have camera mounted in the cockpit and the pilot wears video goggles to get view from cockpit in order to fly the model. Camera is mounted on 2 servo gimble controlled by headtracking gyro via the radio. Awesome fun and a great new emerging technology. Have a look at rc-tech.ch in the video section or FPV.com...we have gotten into this a while ago. It really is awesome fun. A mate of mine is a full size fixed wing and heli pilot and he loves it too even though he flies full size. We have OSD's (on screen displays...bit like a HUD image that overlays the camera picture that you see in the video goggles. All GPS based data. The units even have inbuilt autopilots that will fly the model home in case your model loses radio signal (ie. fail safe).

We love having dogfights with Multiplex easystars...have taken each other out a few times and spiralled to earth in a flat spin minus one wing from 160m up! A bit of zap and tape and you are back in the air 10 minutes later to do it all again!

Also have a look on vimeo.com and do a search under "Daniel Wee"....he has a video on there of a 40 sized FPV plane flying 4.3 km out over the ocean off Singapore over an oil rig and then flying back home under autopilot. Have a look at this stuff (which we are using now) and imagine where this hobby will be in another 10 years! I predict we will have ILS or autopilot based landing systems on our model aircraft....now that would be cool! the guys over here are doing his now with trainer aircraft in UAV competitions. As the technology matures it will filter into the mainstream also.

I had to laugh when I was watching a doc on foxtel recently on the marines in Iraq using much the same sort of gear to do recces of villages before moving in.....made me think I am in the wrong job!

Let me know what you think. i would think that with your A10 experience you would love this stuff.

Regards,

Craig.