And finally.....
Next morning dawned even better, even stronger wind, and north easterly too –just right for another trip to the Orme! I had decided to try the camera mounted on my slope soaring SAS “Wildthing” – newly acquired a few months earlier as my first slope soarer ever – I know, I know - lives 15 mins from the Gt Orme, and never been sloping shame on him.
The lack of vibration from any power train should go some way to improving the image quality.
So flask filled, off we set again.
48 mins after throwing caution to the considerable wind, it was time to land. I had completed this first flight of the day with the camera in “ahead mode”. I now simply turned off the camera to save the clip to disk, and then, after removing it from its mirror holder, turned it back on again, and stuck it back on the nose. Streaking skyward in the good strong lift, I quickly flipped her inverted for the aerial view.
37 mins later, having been “out to sea” rolled, looped, and generally made the onboard camera operator completely sick, it was time to bring her in. I chickened out of an Inverted landing, fearing the little camera might not approve – besides, the COG had definitely altered slightly with the addition of the camera, and holding inverted throughout almost all the flight, sometimes with the plane completely out of view below the slope edge, was, shall we say…… challenging!
I “arrived” at the back of slope, and recovered the camera, powered down, and had a well deserved cup of hot coffee and a sticky bun - ooh yummy!
Back home, the files were loaded into the PC, and windows media player fired up.
Yippee – much better :) - In fact not a bad first attempt if I say so myself.
Time now to try my hand at editing in “movie maker” courtesy of Microsoft windows XP.
Both clips were edited crudely down to a size that UTube would accept, and uploading commenced.
A link is included here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCJOvsJ8328 in order for you to judge for yourself. PS whilst your there...checkout the brilliant "teddy in flight" video too !
But be kind, remember this is all new to me, and the purpose was to just assess the camera’s ability.
I have since conducted further testing to positively identify the cause of the distortion in the first clip done on the powered plane. Extensive tests in the workshop prove almost positively that vibration is the culprit NOT radio interference. Furthermore, strapping the unit tightly to the airframe worsens things, but hey – I didn’t fancy losing it into the foaming briny !
In summary I would say the FlyCamOne is great value for money.
Be careful how and what you mount it to, - a glider is definitely the best idea.
It certainly didn’t cope too well on my JP “Twister Bell” helicopter.
I imagine that if you really wanted to use it on a Heli, it might be disappointing, but then that’s your own fault for trying to fly a bloomin’ eggbeater :-) :-)
Specifications follow…….
SIZE 85 X 35 X 10 mm
WEIGHT 24 GRAMS
VIDEO 25 FPS @ 320 X 250 pixel resolution
FUNCTIONS Stills, Audio, Video, Card-reader, Memory stick, Webcam
POWER Integral lithium cell @ 170 mAh
CARD SLOT SD / MMC
INTERFACE USB 1.1
denotes 
