All you need is a small videocam – I’m using a hacked CVS unit that I made up for in-plane mounting; using it on the “Video-Hat” works nicely because it weighs about 3 ounces and fits nicely on the brim of a cap. To mount it, I took a piece of packing foam and cut it to fit the videocam and angled it so that on my head it points straight ahead – in line with my eyes:

After punching two small holes in the brim, I used a nylon zip-tie to hold the foam piece to it. I used rubber bands to hold the battery pack tot he camera:

Here’s a video of my Lightflite RC Bug that I took with the “Video Hat”:

Lightflite RC Bug

The GWS Slow Stick has been around for years – almost everyone has owned one. It almost seems ridiculous to do a build article on this, but since the kit has changed – why not? This article will show some strengthening mods and also my design for a “Floating Camera Mount”.

I’ll start with the kit contents:

I first noticed that the fiberglass rods supplied with the kit are flimsy and will allow too much flex; instead I will use carbon fiber rods that will eliminate the flexing of the wing. With a camera strapped below the CG, the wings in stock form are vulnerable to folding. The pictures below show the steps I used for the wing brace as well as a comparison of the carbon fiber vs fiberglass rods:

After both wing braces are complete, it’s time to install them on the wing. I used some good fiber reinforced strapping tape. The braces were glued in with 5 minute epoxy and taped as the pictures show. This will add some weight but the advantage of strength is what’s needed.

This is the brand of strapping tape I used

I opted to not use the supplied horizontal and vertical stabs – they seemed too flimsy for me, so I made my own from 6 mm Depron. You can use the supplied stabs and they may work fine – it’s just a personal preference.

I couldn’t find an easy way to use the stock landing gear, so I will use a carbon fiber unit. Some new mounts had to be made so that the installation was user friendly. I also have a picture of the brushed motor next to the brushless motor. The brushless motor has 30 oz of thrust turning an 11 x 5.5 APCe at only 15 amps – should have plenty of power – the way I like it!

I’ll be getting the following items to complete this thing (links showing where to buy):

• 3 1/2″ lite wheels
• HS 81 Micro servos (2)
• 12C 2200 3 cell lipo
• Carbon Fiber landing gear
• 3.5 mm bullet connectors
• Set of Deans connectors

I already have the receiver and ESC.

The fuse is ~31.5 inches long… I think they went to the two piece fuse is so they can save money on smaller boxes.

Slow Stick Camera Mount

I have been designing a special camera mount specific to the SS – I’ll call it a ‘Floating Camera Mount‘ which will aid in eliminating motor vibration.

Here is the camera mount I have been working on. It rides on foam rubber and the only contact with the frame is a 1/8″ width of plywood. My goal was to create a mount that will allow picture taking with the motor on; normally the motor is off, but sometimes the motor needs to be on to hold a certain spot.

The plans can be found HERE.

I used 1/8″ plywood for all of the construction. During assembly I had to make a few changes, so I have the plans correct although you may notice the pictures differ in shape (trust the plans!) You should be able to print the plans and use the templates for cutouts over the wood (1:1 ratio). Below are some pictures that help define the assembly:

This is pretty easy… Grab some paint stir sticks from Menards, Lowes, Home Depot, etc -
they are free and they don’t care what you want to use them for:

All painted and installed – good for forward or reverse shooting – my favorite!

NOTE: This is a new site so please
consider it a “work in progress”. I would greatly encourage readers to
send in articles for posting on AmpAviators. In contrast to a forum,
finding articles of interest will be TONS easier here.

Dave

I found a great freeware program called VirtualDub – this is a great way to quickly clean up videos before and also to perform some very nice enhancements – their description:

"VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images."

After searching and trying about a dozen freeware video editors, I found VirtualDub to be the easiest one (for me) to use and very powerful. I needed a video editing program to handle downloaded videos from my overclocked CVS videocam, which I'm using to take aerial photos with one of my radio controlled planes.

The opening screen:

Move the cursor to "File" and you get this:

When you open a video file, you see two screens – one for the loaded image and one for the altered image:

By using the arrow keys on your keyboard, you can step through the video file frame-by-frame; in some of the videos I have, sometimes one frame is too dark or light as the scene shifts – deleting this one frame smoothes out the video nicely.

You can get detailed information about the file:

The following two composite images show all the options within the program:

Under "Video", "Filters", you can select from a wide range of effects:

You can alter the video file as follows:

And when you're finished editing the file, you can save it in a variety of formats:

For a freeware program, you get a LOT of capabilities for basic video editing functions.

I did some simple edits on this videoclip (enhanced the color and sharpened the video) – these will play in Windows Media Player:

No Change (6.8 MB)
Changed (3.7 MB)

NOTE: This is a new site and consider it a "work in progress". I would greatly encourage readers to send in articles for posting on AmpAviators. In contrast to a forum, finding articles of interest will be TONS easier here.

Email Joe

The aft compartment of the Super Cub just ACHES for cargo. One thing that seems like a natural is to mount a camcorder in this compartment to take in-flight videos. The cover is held in place by two-sided tape – it's easy to pull off. In the pic below, I inserted two carbon rods into the sides of the compartment to hold the 5-1 DVR in place:

It fits perfectly, nice and snug:

I then widened the hole for a lens opening:

My procedure is to get the Super Cub ready for flight, then at the last moment I insert the DVR into its compartment, turn it on, cover it up and fly. To make the cover more secure, I added a screw to the front of the cover and use rubber bands aft – just in case! The resulting Super Cub Video.

All in all, a very easy mod and nice way to use the Super Cub for videos.

NOTE: This is a new site and consider it a "work in progress". I would greatly encourage readers to send in articles for posting on AmpAviators. In contrast to a forum, finding articles of interest will be TONS easier here.

Email Joe

After completing the hack on the CVS videocam, I wanted to mount the camera somewhere inside the Super Cub. I have mounted the 5-1 mini DVR inside the aft compartment and wanted to do the same for the CVS. However, what I did not want to do is mount it looking down – this time I wanted to shoot videos through the side.

The CVS videocam weighs all of 2 ounces with a AAA battery pack – no sweat for the Cub:

After some trial fittings, I decided to cut a hole in the side of the Super Cub for the lens – pic below:

I then mounted the CVS inside, clearing the control rods – the battery pack is held in place with velcro. The CVS is held in place by the fit between the top of the compartment and the bottom mounting plate:

The CVS records without any vignetting by the sides – the link below to YouTube shows the final product (I edited this to cut out a lot of sky shots – it was bouncing around some from upper winds):

Super Cub Inboard Video

It was not a great day, but the CVS videocam is clearly superior to the 5-1 Mini DVS. The CVS videocam cost about $30 – at this price, it's hard to beat, considering that after hacking it, you can adjust the quality of the video to suit your needs (and it's easy to find).

What I DID NOT do was edit the video to enhance quality using VirtualDub – I wanted to show the quality "as is". This was shot at the normal CVS setting is 384 x 288 with a bitrate of 127 (Low); I did edit out some "sky shots", however. I also left the audio track in, but normally I would delete it and dub in a song – better than listening to a buzzing motor.

To improve the quality (although it may not show up on YouTube), I would sharpen it up and maybe brighten it a bit.

The Super Cub as a camera platform is an easy mod and a fun project. This plane continues to amaze me as a very easy to fly plane with LOTS of potential for fun mods. The CVS videocam hack is a worthwhile project, assuming you are OK with mods of this sort.

NOTE: This is a new site and consider it a "work in progress". I would greatly encourage readers to send in articles for posting on AmpAviators. In contrast to a forum, finding articles of interest will be TONS easier here.

Email Joe