RC Airplanes and Helicopters

ChuckS

ChuckS

Veteran
I'm researching flying my 7D from an RC Helicopter. One of the people helping me invited me to the local RC airfield to watch and learn.

So here's the result of me walking around. There's no Aerial photography and its all hand held, but it was fun nonetheless.

 
I've started to look into this as well. A lot of people have figured out some fantastic setups and they keep improving every year.

While there are a myriad of issues to understand and work through, I feel like once I have a chunk of change to really go after this, I think that a large RC helicopter could do some of the best low aerials available.

This forum seems pretty well informed:
http://www.helifreak.com/forumdisplay.php?f=53
 
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Ryan Farnes said:
I've started to look into this as well. A lot of people have figured out some fantastic setups and they keep improving every year.

While there are a myriad of issues to understand and work through, I feel like once I have a chunk of change to really go after this, I think that a large RC helicopter could do some of the best low aerials available.

This forum seems pretty well informed:
http://www.helifreak.com/forumdisplay.php?f=53
Click to expand...

Have you flown an RC Helicopter? There are certainly some people who are very good at "flying" the 7D [and other cameras], however, there's a lot more to it than having the money to purchase the equipment.

Its amazing how good at piloting these RC helicopters you have to be to get great shots. Having said that the sophistication of the aircraft has improved, gyros for all three axis of stabilization etc., and the weight and quality of the camera's [7D/550] is much better, so its definitely doable.

I was hoping more for a multi-copter [tricopter or quadcopter] that is more like a UAV, I'm not that interested 3D flying, but for the most part they can't manage a large enough payload and if they can they're way too expensive.

But its exciting to see what's possible.
 
I used to fly R/C helicopters.

To lift a 7D with lense, you'd probobly need a .90 sized helicopter.
It's definetly NOT something you can just pick up and fly, remember your literaly balancing thousands of dollars worth of gear in the air, you might end up with some very expensive paper weight at the end of the day,

Those aerial photogs/videographers have special mounts on their helicopters with gyros to stabilize the camera itself.

Then they use a "co-pilot" type of device like a "hellicommand" that stabilizes the helicopter itself. These aren't cheap.

Factor in the downlink to stream the footage down to you, insurance etc. not cheap at all.

Your better off hiring someone to do this for you. Because you can't learn to fly these things in a day.
 
You don't have to learn it in a day. Also, electric helicopters have come a long way and so have the gyros, servos and even altitude hold, which mitigates much of the need for an auto-pilot. What might have cost $30K five years ago can now be accomplished for significantly less.

That's not to say that its easy or "cheap," but then hiring someone to do this for you certainly isn't cheap either. Plus I guess I'm the odd guy out here, I don't really want to do this so I can get shots for someone else, sure you can get some great shots for movies etc., but more importantly you can capture a perspective of our world that few people have ever experienced.

If people would have decided that it was easier to hire someone else to do it, projects like Planet Earth would have never been attempted. They flew cameras in just about everything imaginable, even kites, and they got spectacular footage.
 
i got a helicopter as a present, a fairly simple, small one. I live near a flat grassy area with one sole tree. I figured if I could get it in the air, then all I had to do was practice. It leaped up in the air - ignored everything I did with the control and slammed into the tree! Flight time about 12 seconds. New rotor blades arrived in the post. Tried again, this time very gently increased power. It shook a little then went up - fairly straight, so I though I'd try a little direction. It went up, up, up then straight down in a dive and drilled itself into the ground. I didn't try again - helicopters are the spawn of the devil and those people who fly them must have the ability to rub their stomach with one hand while being able to tap their head with the other, while standing on a basket ball on one leg!
 
ChuckS said:
Have you flown an RC Helicopter? There are certainly some people who are very good at "flying" the 7D [and other cameras], however, there's a lot more to it than having the money to purchase the equipment.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have flown an RC heli. Just small 3 and 4 channel. I recently joined AMA and my local flying club here outside of DC to get into more serious flying.
http://www.dc-rc.org/

So I'm at the beginning of the journey, but I'm very optimistic about the possibilities. Like yourself I suppose. :happy:
 
paulears said:
i got a helicopter as a present, a fairly simple, small one. I live near a flat grassy area with one sole tree. I figured if I could get it in the air, then all I had to do was practice. It leaped up in the air - ignored everything I did with the control and slammed into the tree! Flight time about 12 seconds. New rotor blades arrived in the post. Tried again, this time very gently increased power. It shook a little then went up - fairly straight, so I though I'd try a little direction. It went up, up, up then straight down in a dive and drilled itself into the ground. I didn't try again - helicopters are the spawn of the devil and those people who fly them must have the ability to rub their stomach with one hand while being able to tap their head with the other, while standing on a basket ball on one leg!
Click to expand...

Not to laugh at your plight but that was very funny, well said.

If you don't know how to fly them then they are nearly impossible to fly. You learn so that you can spend the rest of your life practicing.

That's also why they invented the flight simulator....
 
Ryan Farnes said:
Yes, I have flown an RC heli. Just small 3 and 4 channel. I recently joined AMA and my local flying club here outside of DC to get into more serious flying.
http://www.dc-rc.org/

So I'm at the beginning of the journey, but I'm very optimistic about the possibilities. Like yourself I suppose. :happy:
Click to expand...

Checked out the website, looks like a great club. All the people that I met at CIC were very friendly. This hobby seems to engender people who are willing to go out of their way to help each other
 
ChuckS said:
Checked out the website, looks like a great club. All the people that I met at CIC were very friendly. This hobby seems to engender people who are willing to go out of their way to help each other
Click to expand...

So true. Really nice guys.

Look forward to seeing stuff posted here. I've heard of people flying the 5D, but it seems like you really have to get the vibration issue under serious control due to the CMOS sensor.
 
Cool video. I love this stuff.

I had a bergen Gasser at one point. That was a monster of a heli, with a 30cc pull-start motor and and about a 6 foot rotor diameter. I had big plans to mount the camera to it and everything, but it put a big strain on the credit cards. After about $4k and still needing a lot more, I abandoned it.

I do have plans to put a dslr on a twin engine electric glider, but that will probably be the T2i or GH1 for the light weight and lower $$ lost if I crash.

If you're seriously thinking about getting into heli's and you have unlimited money, then you will really benefit from having an instructor, but it takes years to master flying enough to get silky smooth shots. I pretty much determined that unless I dedicated all my time and energy to it, it wasn't worth doing.
The other thing is that it has fairly limited uses.

Get the program RealFlight G3. That's how I learned to fly a heli before doing it for real, and I never crashed because of all the simulation practice.

Another great forum with a big aerial photography section is runryder.com

And the best in the business and a cool site to check out is flying-cam.com
Their heli's are upwards of $200k each and have shot many movies you've seen.
 
I don't think most people realize, that even with modern equipment, an RC helicopter is considerably more difficult to master than its full size counterparts. For about 20 years I was ranked as one of the top 10 RC helicopter pilots in the US. I thought getting good quality video out of one of my helis would be a cake walk. Spending every waking moment working on it, a year later I was producing footage I wasn't embarrassed to show others. I should also mention that I have 30 years working in engineering and spent the early part of my career doing vibration analysis and dynamic balancing. These are some of the reasons why you can count the people doing broadcast quality work on both hands.
 
boomstrikevideo said:
I don't think most people realize, that even with modern equipment, an RC helicopter is considerably more difficult to master than its full size counterparts. For about 20 years I was ranked as one of the top 10 RC helicopter pilots in the US. I thought getting good quality video out of one of my helis would be a cake walk. Spending every waking moment working on it, a year later I was producing footage I wasn't embarrassed to show others. I should also mention that I have 30 years working in engineering and spent the early part of my career doing vibration analysis and dynamic balancing. These are some of the reasons why you can count the people doing broadcast quality work on both hands.
Click to expand...

After the little I've flown RC's I'd tend to agree with you, however, I've met and seen first hand people flying the 7D with a 700 series electric helicopter that got amazing footage. Whether or not you consider it broadcast quality has more to do with whether you consider the footage from a 7D broadcast quality, because the "flying" was as good as anything I've seen from a full size helicopter.

Although I don't have much experience at flying RC's I do have about 2000 hour of turbine rotary wing experience and have done a fair amount of aerial photography. I'm not interested at all in "3D" or aerobatic flight and although RC flying is quite different from piloting a full size aircraft I have a fairly good feel for stable flight.

I don't think for a second this is a cake walk, but I do think its doable. There have been some significant advances in servos, gyros, altitude hold and autopilots that although they obviously can't fly the aircraft autonomously they can greatly improve the stability and fortunately the expense has come down quite a bit too.

Plus the larger new RC Helis are much more stable than RC's from just a few years ago. I'm more concerned that the FAA and homeland security will require me to remove my shoes, underwear and dignity before flight. How humiliating :Drogar-Angry(DBG):
 
I won't deny that some may get lucky and be able to acquire smooth footage on a given moment of one day. But to do this as a business, providing good footage, on demand, in an assortment of locations and in varying wind/weather conditions day after day is something entirely different. I only mention business because I can't imagine anyone putting out this much effort otherwise.

How many times have you seen smooth video from an RC platform in anything above 10mph winds for example?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxOXa-KdiPo

I'm not saying you can't do it if your determined. I'm just saying that I for one certainly underestimated the level of commitment required.
 
Yeah. Doing it as a business would be quite the undertaking given the need to be able to deliver consistently. Especially with things like weather, insurance, uncertainty about potential future FAA UAV restrictions, etc...
 
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