Peter wrote:
I wonder how that was signed off? Or did they temporarily re-class the jet on the Experimental regime?
In my part of the world the aircraft can stay on the register, but requires a permit-to-fly for the flights it does with such a modification. Some test flights by a test pilot will also be required.
But to be nitpicking, this is not an “external” camera mount. The same plane seems to have been used already for camera work with a slightly smaller camera which fits into a modified radome:
And I am also pretty sure that for the actual flights with the IMAX camera, a cover like this one here was fitted:
And this whole thing reminds me of the fact that I have still not watched the “Interstellar” BluRay which has been lying around since months…
I have a friend who wants to take some video shots of the Alps and wants to do it with a GoPro mounted on the outside of the aircraft. He bought one of these mounts which seem to be FAA compliant.
Does anyone know what are the rules in EASA land? Is anyone using something like this and how do you make sure you don’t damage anything, including but not limited to your aircraft?
Above post moved to an existing thread. There are some possibly relevant posts there.
One person I know of who is involved in mechanical mod approvals is @mh and he might know if there is a reg on this.
I had a conversation with someone the other day on this topic, and the obvious place on his plane was a tiedown bracket. You should remove the camera immediately after the flight, not just in case somebody wants to create trouble for you but mainly because a €500 camera is likely to get stolen pretty quick 
If you later post the movie publicly and somebody asks how you mounted the camera, you just tell them you use suction cups!
Vladimir wrote:
Does anyone know what are the rules in EASA land? Is anyone using something like this and how do you make sure you don’t damage anything, including but not limited to your aircraft?
Leightweight Cameras can be mounted as a standard change with SC-403a. [ local copy ] Simply define the areas where you intend to mount them as an addendum to the AFM, have Form 123 signed by your part 66 certifying staff and post the edited videos on youtube.
I spent much of my working life filming from helicopters and aeroplanes and I may be out of date with the regulations but back then the supplier of whichever mount we wanted to attach to the aircraft had to get approval from the CAA of the country in which we were filming.So I think it would probably be a good idea to check with them before sticking a mount on any external aircraft surface.
As for the mounts themselves, without doubt the best results have come from a gyro stabilised mount but they cost a great deal of money and require specialized personal to attach and set up on the aircraft.
So if you are looking more towards the cheap and cheerful my advice would be not to get too technical. One has to remember that the aircraft is bouncing around and vibrating. If you have a point of reference such as a window a fixed steady mount will show everything as seen by the pilot which to the camera is steady. Any soft mount whilst evening out the bumps will also cause the window to move in frame which can be quite perturbing. We often took the doors off a helicopter and used bungies to absorb the bumps, it was remarkably successful on many occasions. So Peter’s description of a mount with a set of elastic bands inside could be very successful, providing you don’t want to see inside and outside of the aircraft at the same time. The same trade offs apply to whether or not to leave the internal camera stabiliser on or turn it off.
Mounts for filming from a pressurized aircraft are a whole different ballgame and are very individual to the aircraft.
As for shutter speeds, well the faster the shutter the smoother the image as long as you can play the image back at the speed it was filmed.
For eliminating the strobe caused by the prop, depends on your camera.Its the same principle as eliminating the bar line when filming a computer screen, you have to match the number of rotations to the shutter rotations once switching the camera on and off until you get something that you are happy with although for film cameras you used to be able to get a device which would do this by altering the camera speed..You will be very lucky to get a perfect screen for more than a few seconds, but then that’s what editing does.
Some cinematographers ask for the shutter angle to be changed but this is a job for a specialist.
If you are not going to do aerial cinematography/videography for a living is to keep your mount simple and choose it based on what you actually want to see. A mount for shooting the instruments is not necessarily ideal for filming out ot the window which in turn is not necessarily the best for filming passengers and pilot. Don’t spend a lot of money until you know for sure the mount is going to be what you want. Its best to experiment, slices of bicycle inner tube glued together and velcroed in position can sometimes give you a better image than the wrong £1000 mount.
Like flying the more you do it the more you learn and at leat with digital the recording material is both cheap and reusable. Have fun.
Many aerial photographers open up half a stop of exposure from what would normally be correct.They claim many reasons for this and I have to admit it usually works but it is not essential.
E
gallois wrote:
I may be out of date with the regulations but back then the supplier of whichever mount we wanted to attach to the aircraft had to get approval from the CAA of the country in which we were filming.So I think it would probably be a good idea to check with them before sticking a mount on any external aircraft surface.
You are at least slightly out of date. :-) As mh wrote in a previous post (even with reference to the actual regulation – CS-STAN), for ELA2 aircraft you can have camera (mounts) installed without the need for any CAA approval, subject to conditions stated in CS -STAN.
It depends on the camera. The stabilised ones mounted on helicopters, which I think Gallois is referring to, are huge things; one I recall, operated under an AOC out of Elstree was in a spherical enclosure about 0.7m diameter, hanging off the side of a helicopter, and weighed god knows what. No way would CS-STAN cover that
Let’s look at some conditions in 403a:
The mounted camera needs to be self-contained, with internal batteries, and no external wiring.
That precludes any camera which can run by itself on a flight of several hours; see the next condition
Maximum mass of the camera including mountings shall not exceed 300 g.
If you add a battery pack which makes the standard “action cam” run for several hours, you will be over 300g easily.
The installer shall amend the AFM by an AFMS, which indicates:
Most users will not be doing this bit
that GSM, UMTS, LTE, or similar transmission technologies with unknown or more than 100 mW output
power shall be switched off during flight.
That probably precludes wifi remote control, which makes it impossible to shoot a flight of several hours (bluetooth is probably ok but you get no preview etc)
So, CS-STAN allows the installation of a straight action cam, even in a waterproof housing (the go-pro models for example are below 300g, but not all action cams), but only with the internal battery, and I don’t see how you could do say a 5hr flight which is captured on video, totally hands-free i.e. no distraction for the pilot, with a synced sound track (typically done with a separate mp3 recorder in the cockpit connected to the intercom via a spare headset socket – search EuroGA for e.g. the words sound recording) and which could then be edited into whatever you want. I suppose, with bluetooth on/off you could do it, turning the sound recorder on and off at the same time as the camera… or have another means of doing the sync.
If the 300g weight limit was not there, it would not be a problem. But then someone has to look at the mounting “intelligently”. But even with a sub-300g camera you have to look at the mounting “intelligently” because a 150g go-pro, with its frontal cross-section, at say 150kt, and screwed into the typical 0.8mm wing skin, will not do the skin much good. At best it will flex like hell so you get a useless video – like so many online which show a lot of jello.
This concession is definitely a step forward in providing an assurance of legality but you still need to be smart about it, to get a decent result, and I am not sure about flights that are longer than the battery can run for. Typical action cams do 1.5hrs, generally less at 4K and slightly more at 1080P.
Feel free to make a rulemaking proposal to amend SC-403a in the next update: https://www.easa.europa.eu/document-library/rulemaking-programmes/rulemaking-proposal
@mh I am not sure if your suggestion is tongue in cheek but how would one go about suggesting e.g. that it should include a 0.5kg camera which is externally powered via a wired connection installed IAW standard aviation practice (a separate CB, etc)?
Also, while we should be grateful for less prescriptive regs at any opportunity, I can easily see where a 0.5kg camera would be completely safely mounted while a 0.25kg camera would be very non-safely mounted just 10cm away.
A good thread on camera mounting is here.
Actually, it is not as much tongue in cheeck as you might think. Since you have already figured out many of the arguments and some of the impacts, why not fill out the Candidate Issue Identification Form? https://www.easa.europa.eu/rulemaking-proposal-candidate-issue-identification-form They have to give you a qualified answer.
Peter wrote:
Also, while we should be grateful for less prescriptive regs at any opportunity, I can easily see where a 0.5kg camera would be completely safely mounted while a 0.25kg camera would be very non-safely mounted just 10cm away.
Yes, that’s why a Part 66 CFS has to verify the positions, where you may install the camera.
