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August 4, 2007: I flew the tailcam today! My first flight was a full flight envelope expansion flight (stall to Vne & everything between). Everything checked great & the post-flight inspection showed no problems with the mount. The next flight was about an hour worth of aerobatics & low level flying. The camera was rock solid and I'm fairly happy with the aim axis of the camera. Here's the video from the flight:  Video: "The Dawn" (37MB)
August 3, 2007: I took today off work to get the tailcam ready to fly tomorrow. I got to the hangar & set up my trusty Mobile Master Cool air conditioner. I removed the peel ply on the tailcam mount & everything looked pretty good. 
With the 106 deg heat yesterday, I was afraid the epoxy might not be all that great, but I'll take it. You can see the fiberglass edges here wrapped into the camera hole. Those got a quick blip with the Dremel tool & touch of sandpaper & they were perfecto. 
Note the temp on the bottom right of the clock. This was about as hot as it got today. Cooler than yesterday. 
From there, I sanded most of the micro off to get things smooth again & ready to prime. 
I masked off the vertical tail... 
...and shot filling primer on the camera mount. 
It's not perfect, but it's close enough to get some test flights on. Here's a shot looking forward fron behind the tail: 
Since it still needs a little finishing work, I'm going to fly it with it in primer. So, I heat shrinked the power & video connectors so they'd always keep in good contact in flight. The red heat shrink tubing is 3/4"...HUGE! The white is 1/2". They both shrunk up plenty to keep things from moving around. 
I put a couple dabs of silicone in the mount & put the tailcam in. I shot some more video to set the roll alignment. Once everything was done I cleaned up the hangar a bit & got a few things ready for flying tomorrow. I've wanted a tailcam on my airplane since I bought my first airplane in 1996. Finally. I have a few things to tidy up in the cockpit, but it'll be ready to fly in the morning! 
August 2, 2007: I started today by using the Dremel tool's sanding wheel to grind off the high spots. 
After that, I got it to a rough shape with sandpaper by hand. 
Then with sanding blocks & contoured foam blocks I got it to its final shape. It almost looks like it belongs... 
Here's a shot looking into the camera opening. I used a long drywall cutting bit in the Dremel tool to open up the portion behind the camera so the wiring would be easy to route back there. 
Here's how I left it looking today. I laid 2 layers of thin glass over the mount extending just over 1/2" onto the exising fiberglass tip. The yellow stuff on there in the picture below is peel ply. It'll get removed tomorrow & should make the final product lighter. 
August 1, 2007: I put a huge amount of micro on the tailcam mount today. This should be PLENTY to sand down to a nice shape. 
The camera was much more difficult to get out of the micro today. The camera is now completely surrounded by micro except for the lens & a little bit of micro seeped back onto the wires, so I had to do a little bit of motivation to extract the camera. I ground a little hole behind the camera & pushed it out with a small rod. 
I pulled the camera out and cleaned up the inside of the fairing behind where the camera sits with a Dremel tool. 
July 30, 2007: When I got to the hangar today I was pleased to find the camera nice & snug still safe & free from all of yesterday's micro balloons. I cut the thumb tip off of the latex glove & was able to slide out the camera very easilly. 
Thankfully, the glove also was very easy to remove from the dried micro. I trimmed the micro up a bit with the Dremel and some sand paper and shot some more test video to verify that everything remained aligned during drying. 
After verifying the alignment was still correct, I protected the camera to get it ready for more micro. This latex was considerably thinner than the glove, but there's still a 99.8% chance that nothing will touch the camera. 
I put the camera back in position & slopped on a huge pile of fairly dry micro. It looks like the top of the new fairing will be roughly at the top of the existing tail tip. 
This isn't the lightest way to glass in a fairing, but it should work & be shaped exactly how I want it. It should also hold the camera very securely. It'll still take some more micro before it's ready to glass, but I think I'm still on track to have this flying by this weekend. Pretty, no. Flying, yes. July 29, 2007: I finally started mounting the camera in my tail. The toughest part so far was getting up the nerve to cut into my perfectly good tail: 
I hooked up the bullet camera (aka tailcam) to my camcorder & positioned the tailcam to get the video framing I wanted. 
From there I marked the tail with a Sharpie... 
...and starting cutting. A few seconds with the Dremel tool & my pretty tail had a new ventilation port. I did about 15 minutes of fit-grind-fit checking with the existing fiberglass in the vertical tail tip. I ground down the glass so that if I pressed down on the tailcam it was in the exact position I wanted. Once I got the camera positioned right, I recorded some video for comparison later. 
For now, I'm aiming the camera just below level. For my camera, this just gets the horizontal tail tip leading edges in the video frame. This gets most of the airplane in the video frame & should give a neat perspective of the ground moving by quickly just in front of the horizontal tail while still seeing plenty of sky above the plane.  Tailcam fit test video (2MB)
The top rib only had a small hole in it (about 1/4"). To get the video & power cables through, I had to make it bigger & deburr it. 
Then I pulled the video & power cables through the vertical tail rib lightening holes with a piece of music wire. I secured the wiring with a gob of RTV. 
To minimize the amount of extra fiberglass, micro balloons, etc in the tail, I floxed a little shelf in place about 1/8" to 1/4" below the bottom of where the tailcam will sit. 
Once that was in place, I slopped the whole area with a micro balloon/epoxy mix & secured the camera. I latex glove seemed to work ok to keep the camera from getting covered in goo. 
When the micro dries, I'll remove the camera (and glove bits) and shoot some more test video. July 17, 2007: I get a lot of emails asking me what pieces & parts it takes to take video like that in "This Was Fun..." and "A Day Off Work." Some of the questions people have sent are listed below. For some background info, the setup I use is:
The bullet camera I use has a 170 degree field of view. This gives very unique video perspectives from just about anywhere on the airplane. (Unique, that is, until you all buy your own.) To put that into other words, the camera sees just about the same field of view as your eyes do. The video pointed at me from "A Day Off Work" was shot with the camera mounted about a foot in front of my face. A bullet camera is small & light, so it's fairly easy to mount and stabilize. One of the biggest problems I've had with shooting video directly from a camcorder (i.e. no bullet camera) is shaking. Shaky video is video people don't want to watch. With a light, wide angle bullet camera, vibrations in the cockpit don't seem to be too distracting to the video. What about this el cheapo bullet camera? You get what you pay for...and it depends what you want. Currently, HAD CCDs (Advanced, EXView, etc) are good sensors for the money. My bullet camera is marketed as a 480 line camera. There are quite a few cameras out there in the 300-400 line range for much cheaper. They won't have as good of an image though. There are 500+ line cameras, but I've seen several of those with the exact sensor that's on my bullet camera. There are 500+ line cameras with better sensors than my camera has. I haven't done any tests, but camcorders generally record at 720x480 pixels so I'm not sure how much you gain by going higher than a 480 line camera. In general, a better camera will yield better video. Why do you record onto a camcorder? Most bullet cameras do not have any recording capability of their own, so some other device is required to handle the recording. Camcorders offer a multi-use solution. I've had great luck with miniDV camcorders in airplanes at up to 9g's, so that's what I stick with. One of the problems is finding a camcorder that will record video from your bullet camera. Most camcorders DO NOT have analog audio/video inputs. What camcorder do I need? I recommend a miniDV camcorder with AV input recording capability. One with an external microphone jack is nice to have too. I did a search through Circuit City's web page today & found a current list of miniDV camcorders that have AV inputs. Please verify current specifications yourself before spending any money!
What's the best way to mount my bullet camera? That depends. For my in-the-cockpit video, I'm very happy with RAM-Mounts. They have a nearly unlimited variety of adapters & arms that should make just about any type of mount you want. I like the 1" sized RAM-Mounts, but your mileage may vary. I use RAM-Mount arm lengths from 3" to 9". For more RAM-Mount info, you can probably find something here that's worth using: GPS City 1" RAM-Mounts How do you connect the bullet camera to the camcorder for recording? My bullet camera has an attached 3 foot video & power cable. The video portion of the cable has a BNC connector. The bullet camera came with a BNC-to-RCA adapter. I connect the bullet camera cable to the BNC adapter, then to the audio video input cable on the camcorder (also about 3 feet long). That setup works well in the cockpit. I bought a 25 foot video/power cable from Super Circuits that runs from the cockpit to the top of the vertical tail for when I mount the camera up there. Why don't you shoot in high definition? For now, no bullet cameras in the "hobby" price range output in high definition. Similarly, no camcorders in the "hobby" price range will record from an external HD source unless you have a computer sending it info (i.e. over a firewire connection). I love the high definition video my Canon HV-10 shoots, but for now I only get to shoot standard definition video with my bullet camera. Do I need a high definition camcorder? No. See above. They are nice though. What do you use to edit your video? I use Pinnacle Studio 11 Ultimate. It costs roughtly $100 and does everything I need. There are many other options, however. Microsoft's free Movie Maker is more than enough for what most people will ever need. High-end products like Adobe Premiere are also quite usable. Why don't you use your airplane's intercom audio in your latest videos? I think background music makes video interesting/appealing/watchable compared to you listening to me talk or breath. Good background music is hard to find though - and I'm not very good at it. What do you do with your camcorder while you fly? Since I turn my camcorder recording mode on & off multiple times per flight, I can't just mount the thing out of the way. So, I have a small mount in between the seats in my RV-6 where it fits securely & lets me mash buttons while I fly. When is the next video coming out? As soon as I get it done! I'm editing down the extra clips not used in "A Day Off Work" and "This Was Fun..." for the next video. As soon as I find some good background music, I'll be way closer to being done. June 30, 2007: I got back late last weekend from 3 weeks in Alaska. Before I cut into the tail to mount the tailcam, I just had to shoot some more video. I used two mounting locations for this video with a total of 5 different angles. This flight was 30 minutes long & was edited down to 4 minutes in the video below, "This Was Fun..."  Video: "This Was Fun..." (48MB)
May 26, 2007: Here are a few video stills with the camera at different locations on the plane. The first one is about where I'm thinking for its permanent home on the tail. The camera can easily fit both wingtips in the frame. A wing mount is another option. 
May 25, 2007: I flew with the camera today for the first time today. I wanted to get some test footage before I cut into the tail to permanently mount the camera. So, I zip-tied the camera to a RAM mount and pointed it in a few directions while flying. I'm pleased with the camera so far, but it looks like I'll have to be careful with the connections since they aren't really made for a high-g environment. It'll work though. I edited down about 40 minutes of aerobatics into a 4 minute video.  Video: "A Day Off Work" (41MB)
May 23, 2007: Since I bought my first airplane in 1996, I've wanted to mount an external video camera on a plane. I shot video from inside that plane and, more recently, our RV-6. Some of that video is here. However, I've never made the leap and mounted a video camera outside the plane. I've decided it's now time. I researched bullet/lipstick cameras for quite a while and looked at every bit of flying video I could find online and in movies. I think the most striking photos & video have an interesting subject. There aren't that many things that count as subjects for flying video shot from an airplane. The ground, sky & clouds are typical things you see. The airplane is an obvious, but usually excluded subject matter for aerial videography. Many video cameras used have a fairly small view of the world. My plan is to mount a wide-angle video camera on the top of the vertial tail pointing forward. The camera I kept coming back to was Super Circuit's PC221-HR. It's a color camera using a Super HAD CCD sensor with an advertised 170 degree field of view. They call it a 470 line camera which is fairly high resolution, but not the most lines you can get on a video camera these days. It is, however, the highest resolution I could find with a specifically designed super wide angle lens and a weatherproof case. I ordered the camera on May 21, 2007 & got it a few days later. Within minutes of getting home from work, I took the camera in the back yard and shot this test video.  Tailcam test video #1 (6MB)
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