I'd trying to think of some practical way of fitting and triggering a
camera on my Fokker. I tried this before with my old Kadet, with mixed success, using a disposable camera in a balsa bracket, triggered by a
spare servo.

http://www.anjo.com/rc/aircraft/kadet/ap/kadet.ap1.jpg

This shows the club hut as seen from under the port wing of the Kadet on a lowish pass. I am in the red shirt, Rudy is waving his arms about.
That's my old Imprezza with the trunk and the drivers door open. Note the 'fuzzy' nature of the photo. This has got to be due to engine vibration, because the rig took quite clear photos while on the ground with the
engine off -- here is one of my son and I for comparison:

http://www.anjo.com/dotcom/dot.and.dad.jpg

Not the greatest photo, but not fuzzy like the airborn one. I think some vibration resistance (like foam padding in the mount, perhaps) would be a great help, as will using a 4-stroke motor at much lower RPM. Here are
some more in-the-air shots for comparison:

http://www.anjo.com/rc/aircraft/kadet/ap/kadet.ap2.jpg
http://www.anjo.com/rc/aircraft/kadet/ap/kadet.ap3.jpg
http://www.anjo.com/rc/aircraft/kadet/ap/kadet.ap4.jpg
http://www.anjo.com/rc/aircraft/kadet/ap/kadet.ap5.jpg

(Look out under the rear of the wing on kadet.ap3.jpg and you'll catch
Tony's "Black Magic" in flight!)

Anyway, I want to get some nice in-air photos of the Big Red Fokker.
These two photos

http://www.anjo.com/rc/aircraft/dr1/manfred/manfred.flying.1.jpg
http://www.anjo.com/rc/aircraft/dr1/manfred/manfred.flying.2.jpg

are actually fakes. :-) Pretty well done, I think. The aircraft was positioned on it's nose, with the tail to the sky, and I lay on my back
and took the shots *upwards* to get a genuine cloudscape for the
background.

Now I'd like a few shots that show other parts of the aircraft, hopefully
with an elevated view of the landscape in the background and the horizon
in the distance. This shot

http://www.anjo.com/rc/aircraft/dr1/dr1.rtf.1.jpg

shows the aircraft in flight-ready trim, and you can clearly see the
wooden inter-plane struts between the wings near the tips, and the red
metal cabane struts between the top of the fuselage and the bottom of the
top wing-plane, near the center. The inter-plane struts have a single
4-40 screw into a bracket at each end 9top and bottom) and the cabanes
have *two* each 4-40 screws, top and bottom, each side. These could be
used as mounting points for any aparatus, as needed.

The problem is to keep it simple, low-cost, low-drag, minimize impact on Center of Gravity, and get it pointing in a direction that would give an attractive photograph!

Am I wasting my time on this?


--
Playing: "All around the world" by "Oasis"
from the "Be here now" album

---
þ Synchronet þ Made of wood and glue, but mostly glue!