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Making Aerial Video with Bob Widmer Bob Widmer built this beautiful RANS S-9 Chaos for spectacular aerobatics. It's got a 105hp Ski-Doo snowmobile engine in it that gives it a 2000fpm climb rate. Last weekend, on 2/6/05, for the first time Bob was able to capture some aerial video of his aerobatics. We installed a mini-cam on the panel, and the image was recorded by my Sony Digital 8 camcorder that was safely tucked away in a padded case, and strapped down securely. We were both shocked to see we had nailed it on the first try. I was concerned about vibration blurring the video, but the only vibration in that plane came on takeoff when the wheels were rolling. After that the camera stayed clear and steady. Bob was stunned by the results we achieved on such a spur-of-the-moment activity. Here's the video we edited that night, it's 57mb .wmv file but worth it as it's 8 min of high-resolution video in 640x480 format. Do a right-click and Save As. Here's a clip of a second view of Bob's takeoff. You can clearly see that he was off the ground in about five seconds although that's not obvious from the in-cockpit video. This is a 15mb .mov file that requires Quicktime to play it but it's 30 frames per second, shot with my Olympus Z-1 camera. Amazingly, that camera is mainly a still camera, but the movies it takes are good quality. Bob's takeoff viewed from the ground That same day we were messing around with a smoke system for Bob's plane. I had the idea a few weeks back to use an RC smoke pump in my plane and ordered a pump used for filling smoke tanks. It's the same pump they sell for pressure feeding smoke fluid into RC mufflers except without the RC interface. I also got some Super-Dri smoke fluid which is the stuff all the professional airshow pilots use. Bob welded a smoke inlet onto his Y-header right at the junction point, the hottest spot. (He welded one on my header too, I can't WAIT to try it out). After some difficulties with the electrics and the check valve on the temporary test setup we were treated to gobs of billowing white smoke out the exhaust. When you see it go on and off it's because there was no switch used, just bare wire touched to ground. Bob was ecstatic with the results. Here's the video of that test, do a right-click and Save As. Imagine what it will look like with the smoke system on, and two cameras switching views? Bob wants to do a precision aerobatic routine next time. He wants to move the cockpit camera lower to see the stick movements he's making, and also put a camera on the top of the vertical fin to capture the entire plane's perspective, then switch them in flight. Eventually both our planes will be in the air with smoke on and we'll capture some pretty nice air-to-air video. I have a better camera coming, a 420 line CCD. The in-cockpit videos were shot with a 350 line CMOS camera.
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