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Guest David Allen produces the great video podcast Other People’s Airplanes, where he takes you with him on flights in, well, other people’s airplanes. He also co-hosts the popular Pilot’s Flight PodLog, a hangar flying podcast. Follow David on Twitter as @DaveFlys.
We talk about how David uses multiple GoPro cameras mounted on the airplane to capture an immersive in-cockpit video experience, and some exciting changes coming to the Pilot’s Flight PodLog. David has also seen the first rough cut of the documentary film, A Pilot’s Story and he gives us a little taste of that. This will be a DVD that we’ll all want to own when it becomes available. David tells us what it takes to do what he does, and how you can too. Also, if you stick with the show, you’ll hear where the handle Ducky came from.
The week’s aviation news:
- Air Traffic Controllers Caught Sleeping In The Tower At Westchester Airport
- FAA: Ditch The 3rd Class Medical Petition, Denied
- NTSB calls for safety upgrades for Boeing 737 cabin, pilot seats
- National Transportation Safety Board – Safety Recommendation
- F-35 Plane Falls Short on Goals Costing Lockheed $32 Million
In this week’s Australia Desk report: In this week’s Australia Desk report: Grant has been to an air show without Steve! Air New Zealand announces job cuts following low profit figures, Air New Zealand confirms the purchase of two additional 787-9s, Virgin Australia announces profit increase of 118% on same time last year, RAAF may reconsider purchase of C27J Spartans – Airbus Military keen to sell them C295s instead.
Find more from Grant and Steve at the Plane Crazy Down Under podcast, and follow the show on Twitter at @pcdu. Steve’s at @stevevisscher and Grant at @falcon124.
This week on the Across The Pond segment, Pieter Johnson talks to Simon Atack, one of the world’s greatest aviation artists. We find out how Simon starting drawing and painting aeroplanes and what inspires him to keep producing his amazing pictures.
You can find Simon Atack on Twitter at @SimonWAtack on the Web at www.simonatack.com, and on Facebook. Pieter can be found on Twitter as @Nascothornet or XTP Media’s Facebook Page.
Mentioned in the episode:
Links from listeners:
- Conquistadors del Cielo
- Bob Crandall’s return to American Airlines
- AA Bankruptcy Song
- Bye Bye American Pride
- West Coast DHC-6-100 C-FGQH Twin Otter at Vancouver Harbour Seaplane Terminal
- A fantasy camp for airline nerds
Isaac’s Seattle links:
- Aviation Geek Fest
- The Museum of Flight
- 2012 NorthWest Scale Modelers Show
- Future of Flight
- The Flying Heritage Collection
- Historic Flight at KILO-7
- Legend Flyers – Me 262 Project
- Museum of Flight Restoration Center
- Visit Seattle
- Sea-Tac International Airport
Opening and closing music is provided by Brother Love from the Album Of The Year CD. You can find his great music at http://www.brotherloverocks.com/.
Hey Guys!
I have a question for David Allen. How does he affix his GoPro to the wings? I am scared out of my wits to lose a $300 camera off the wing (and possibly hurt people groundside). It seems that a lot of pilots love to video their exploits and I am no exception!
Great show. Keep it up!
Thanks,
Josh
Josh,
Thanks for the question! I have actually asked myself this a number of times, and I think I finally have an answer.
First, it should be noted that I have never done this. All of the cameras for my shows have, to date, been mounted safely inside the cockpit.
I have seen some pretty incredible footage from GoPros attached to the outside of airplanes. Both Kirby Chambliss and Michael Goulian do it, and they just use the 3M adhesive mounts that come with all GoPro camera kits. If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me, so I might actually give this a go in the future.
Fast forward to about 4:20 in this video and look closely at Kirby’s airplane:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUEZCxBcM78
At Acro Camp, we used gaffer tape to lock cameras down to the outside of the plane. Lots of it. We added foam spacers where necessary. This worked well for keeping the camera secure in what was admittedly a very dynamic flying environment. It also had the nasty side-effect of having to unwrap the mummified camera housing after every sortie so that we could change batteries and memory cards.
So the bottom line is this: if you are worried about it, get creative with gaffer tape. If you trust people like Chambliss and Goulian, try just using the 3M mounts that come with the cameras. Personally, I am pretty much convinced they work – even if I haven’t tried it yet.
One final thought: I cannot speak to the legality of strapping things to the outside of your certified airframe. I am not a pilot. So … check up on the STC rules and all that if you are so inclined.
Thanks for listening to the Airplane Geeks, and I hope to see you over at OtherPeoplesAirplanes.com!
Smoke on,
David “Ducky” Allen
Flying in Hawaii is the perfect place for this. So far however, I have only used my iPhone for inflight video. Works OK but I wanna get outside and away from the “blue window haze”. Flying at night over an erupting volcano also presents in flight video problems as you can imagine! Not great, but you can see my channel on youtube, my channel is “volcanoairtours”
I just started with an inter island air carrier flying Cessna Caravans so I’m looking forward to getting some good video soon! 😀
Gotta go fly now!
A note to David Allen:I wanted to look at your website today (March 13) but my AVG anti-virus software warns that your site is infected with “Blackhole Exploit Kit Detection.”
Are your videos also posted on YouTube or Vimeo? Would love to see them, and if you have not done one in a Cirrus SR-22 yet, well, maybe we could work something out!
Brian: Dave Allen replies when I asked him if it was a false positive:
“This was not a false positive. I had, in fact, been infected. I spent much of last week migrating all of my websites to a new server in an effort to completely eradicate this particular string of infestations. So at this point, all should be well. But your commenter is correct, I did get infected with malware.”
It’s ugly out there, folks!