Not a very high quality shot but heres my first aerial with the Raptor 30. I used the left over flashing from the canopy to make a camera pod to house the camera, servo, battery and reciever.

good enough for anything in the military, what more do you want

Very nice!

How about some more details...
Is that a separate RX in there?
How did you rig the shutter button's servo?
How do you keep the camera from powering down automatically?

...More photos of that camera pod would be nice, too...

Cool idea.

One of these days i'll have to give it a shot. ( pun not intended )

Thanks

On this camera, with my current radio, I had to use a separate rx, tx, bat, and servo. The servos travel adjustment is set so that on normal rate it halfpresses the button to focus and on high rate depresses completely. I have a friend that operates the other tx. He holds over on the aileron to halfpress and while still holding switches to high rate to take the pic. We found out that it works just as well to just stay on high rate, depressing the button completely and letting the camara just focus and take the shot all in one step.

In a few days I will be putting a Canon G3 on. It can be set to take timelapse shots so I will not need the extra radio equipment. Downside is the minimum time on the timelapse is 1 minute between shots meaning if I want 10 shots I would have to stay up 10 minutes. Not that much of a problem but I'm going to have to keep track of time or when shots are coming so I can steady for the shot.

I will post shots of the pod later today but they will be without the camera installed. My 10D is off to Canon for cleaning.

Heres a shot of the pod. There is a balsa bracket, reinforced with thin ply and epoxy. The bracket fits around the two lower engine mount holes that I am guessing is for when you convert to a 50 size. I used a carbon fiber rod to go through the bracket and engine mount and that held it in place. I found a better way, although not as easy to remove and put on. I suspended the pod from very small piano type wire. It flexible and it cut back on the vibration that occurred with the hard mount way. I don't have shots of the pod after changing the mounting but the aerial below was taken with the suspension wire method.

Eventful day for me today. I modified my pod and mounted a Sony Mini DV camcorder. Got some really cool aerial video. I have done this with the wireless setups before. Its a little lighter but the camcorder image quality is superior. I will post links to some of the video. Not exciting but we have already found a use for it. That outer area of where we fly is very deep brush and this will work out great for spotting any aircraft that go down. Other event is I landed my first autorotations today with the Raptor.

Very cool, can't wait to see the video!!

I finally got some aerial video up. You can't really appreciate the quality the the mini dv. I had to compress it way down so I would not be forever uploading it over my modem connection[:'(] . This is video of me attempting to follow an airplane but it was very difficult judging my position behind him. I did get a few good shots. Again the quality suffers tremendously from compression. It looks spectacular on big screen straight from the camcorder.

[link=http://www2.netdoor.com/~brenda/aerial.wmv]Aerial Video[/link]

It takes about 20 minutes for me to upload it so it may not be done. If you don't get a video with fade in and out black you did not get the whole thing. Should be about 2.26 mb. Also its going to look much better if you just view at original size.

that looks like something from the discovery channel with a helicopter flying around with a video camera
Looks awesome!

nice clear images, this is what the hubbles sees if you face it to the earth.

Very Nice!! As I am new to mini DV, would you mind posting the model number of the Sony camera? How much does it weigh and which Raptor are you flying, 50? I am about to try hooking up an old digital camera for snapshots and just wanted to get a perspective of the weight handling characteristics of the 50.

Thanks and sorry for all of the questions.

Derek

No problem Derek...

I am using the Sony TRV8 MiniDV. It weighs 1.38 pounds. My Raptor 30 handles it fine so your 50 is not going to have a problem. My pod is suspended but the suspension wires are short so it does not swing around enough to make flying difficult.

My down side to digital still is that I have the JR 6102 so I don't have the luxury of being able to just add another servo to activate the shutter. I had to add another receiver, servo and battery pack. This made my digital still setup weight just slightly less than my camcorder setup. If you have a radio that will allow you to add just a servo that will be even more advantage to you.

Right now I'm looking at a camera mount system designed specifically for 30/50 rc helis. It costs just under $200. Once I get that, convert the 30 to a 50, and upgrade to more channels, I will take my Canon 10D and stabilized lens up. That will make for some spectacular aerial shots.

Let me know if you have any other questions.