Going High Tech

One of my Christmas presents was a gift certificate to REI.  Now, I'm not the biggest outdoorsman out there.  If I spend any time in a store like REI, it's probably to look at the bikes and marvel at how pretty they are.  I'm not saying I didn't appreciate the gift, I'm really just saying I have a tough time spending money certain places, and REI is one of them.  Since Christmas, I've been thinking of what I want to get from there.  Some of my ideas were biking-related.  Like I said, I'm not the biggest outdoorsman, but I'll spend all day on a bike by choice, and a new helmet and gloves would be in order, but I don't need them.  Yes, I know some of you are thinking "man, I'd kill money there in seconds," and I did.

Phil, my pilot friend in the Charlottesville trip back in December, has a GoPro camera that he's taken on a few flights and it seems like it would be pretty cool to have on flights of my own.  It almost happened in a sort of epiphany the other night as I was trying to figure out what to get with this REI card.  I figured GoPro cameras and their ilk are things REI would have, so I checked the site this morning and sure enough, they had them.  As somewhat of a competitor to the GoPro, there's another camera out there called the Contour, which my roommate has.  I figured I'd have a look at both.

When I showed up at the store, they had both the GoPro Hero ($200) and the Contour GPS ($300).  At first, I figured I might as well take the cheaper option, thinking I wouldn't really need the GPS feature.  After thinking it through for a few minutes, though, I thought the GPS tracking would be pretty cool for the flights, so I took the Contour.  The Contour is also much more aerodynamic should I ever work up the courage to mount it externally.



The interface shows both the video and the GPS tracking with Google Maps, which is pretty awesome, no lie.  The days of me trying to grab a screenshot of my FlightAware track are over.  To be honest, I'll probably still include them if my flight gets picked up by the system (so far, only two have), but this will probably steal the spotlight.

The only disadvantage is that these newer smaller cameras use CMOS image processing, which is also commonly referred to as "rolling shutter."  If you're not familiar, and you have an iPhone or other smart phone, try taking a picture of something moving really quickly.  Here's an example from my dad's iPhone on my Luray trip back in October:

That rubbery line with the weird line above it is the prop.  If you YouTube it you'll see how ridiculous how these cameras make props look  Here's a video of it.  It looks pretty ridiculous.  One review said there's a setting on the camera that reduces the effect, but we'll see how it goes.  I'll have to get inventive with how I mount it to avoid too much exposure to the prop.  As boring as it sounds, I think for a lot of the training flights, I may mount it to look more at what I'm doing so I can review what I did and critique it.  Who knows.  We'll see how it goes.  My next flight should be in the next week or so with my dad out to Elkins, so I'll test it out then.