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ZagiCam

I've made done some on-board camera experiments, with good results for as little as I've spent. Also check out local flyer Bill Mulder's site. He's got some great photos taken from a Gentle Lady.

There are two major sections on this page, video and stills.

Video with a Cheap Digital Camera

Click here if you're interested in reading some notes on the on-board video setup.

	Some in-flight aerobatics (3.75 MB MPEG, 160x120). Shot across the wing.
	Shot through a mirror (3.6 MB MPEG). Here's a clip of just the chase scene (213 KB MPEG). The blue stuff on the left is the tape-covered foam nose, the silver line beneath it is the control rod (watch it move in flight), the pink, roughly vertical line on the right is the edge of the mirror, and the white diagonal line just below the hill top in the upper right-hand corner is the plane I was chasing (visible at T1:40).
	That crazy Rob guy trying to get his 15 minutes of fame (482 KB MPEG). That whitish blur right in front of the plane is his Zagi 3C.

Video From the Ground

	Zagis on the hill (5.2 MB MPEG). Video courtesy of Thor Larsen.
	A "making of" video (8 MB MPEG). Video courtesy of Andy Schuler.

Stills from a Disposable Kodak

These stills were taken with a disposable, errr "One-use", Kodak camera attached to my Zagi 400 with a strip of Velcro. The motor was disconnected, and the third channel used to trigger the camera instead of controlling throttle.

Here's what I found:

• The plane flies like a pig with the camera on board. It would have been better to have a 4-channel setup. Once the lift was strong, it flew fine, but there were lots of tip-stalls before that point.
• The camera can take lots of abuse. Once, a mid-air collision knocked the camera off of the plane when it was 50-100 feet in the air. No damage.
• While the camera won't break, impact may cause the shutter to trigger again. I lost quite a few photos to double-exposures.
• Mounting the camera sideways is good from an aerodynamics perspective and makes lining up shots fairly easy, but taking close (< 100 feet) shots, even with the 800 speed film that came with the camera, will result in blurry images. Imagine taking a photo of a telephone pole out your car side window.
• Landing to rewind is a pain. I'm better at landings now, though.

Testing the mechanism	A gratuitous photo of that crazy Rob guy
Practicing a close pass (double-exposure due to impact)	A little better, but still blurry
Altitude seems to remove the blur	In the middle of a loop
A little over-exposed	A nice shot of Laguna Lake