On 5 Mar 2006 09:13:54 -0800, wrote:

A new member at our club had a small video camera, almost like a bullet
cam, but just slightly bigger. Al it takes is an SD card, he had a 1
gig card for this camera. He just clips it to his hat.
I did not get the name of this camera. But I think this member stated
that a famous skateboarder indorses them. Anyone have an idea which
camera this is? Sure beats the hell out of my JVC video camera.

Carl
The Tony Hawk bullet cam is a toy. Forget that. I have made myself a
nice unit that I use for skiing, and I will be experimenting with
various shots from my glider this season. Here's the shopping list.
An ARCHOS AV-500 video recorder, which produces on a 30 gig HD almost
8 continuous hours of 640 x 480 line resolution video in MP4 format.
This unit is about 1/2" x 3.5" x 5". Tiny. Similar to the IPOD Video
idea with the exception that this unit can record analog video
DIRECTLY INTO the unit, much to the chagrin of the Motion Picture
Industry Although the AV-500 is self contained, you'll need a
6v. external power supply for the recorder for long periods of time.
I made the power supply from a 4 cell AA battery holder from Radio
Shack and used the biggest and baddest 2500 mah rechargable NIMH
batteries I could buy. Next, you'll need a bulletcam, suction mount,
and an exension cable, all available on EBay, or a website called
VIOSPORT.COM. Viosport had the best accessory selection, but the
bulletcams can be had less expensively from other places. I found a
great 520 line color bullet cam package for $180 on EBay, brand new.
Make sure your bullet cam has the SONY chip, and that it is not a CMOS
unit. You'll have to educate yourself there. The cam and microphone
(included with the bulletcam package) need their OWN 12v power supply,
which I made with an 8 AA cell holder, again using 2500mah NIMH
batteries. Instead of creating losses with a power converter to step
12v to 6v, I just used 2 separate power supplies. I was able to
squeeze the entire assembly, including a hand-cut foam protector for
the video recorder, and a DPDT rocker switch to activate both power
supplies together, into a hinged Plano fishing lure box measuring 8 x
5.5 x 1.25". SMALL
Another way to get hi quality bullet cam video is to use a 480 or
520 line bullet cam with a VHS, HI-8, Mini DV, or Mini DVD camcorder.
The camcorder MUST BE ABLE TO ACCOMODATE ANALOG
VIDEO/AUDIO INPUTS. Very important. Almost all older VHS, and Hi-8
camcorders had analog RCA jack video/audio inputs. Be careful, as
relatively few of the newer Mini DV or mini DVD camcorders accomodate
analog inputs.
You'll get great video results with a camcorder/bullet combination,
but you'll get a maximum of 30 minutes out of a Mini DVD disc, or an
hour of Mini DV tape, if you use the high resolution settings. You
also have narrow time limits for powering the camcorder. However the
biggest problem is that of playing P.I.C./ cameraman / director
..... starting, stopping the recording, horsing around with
play/pause, etc etc. With the ARCHOS video recorder idea, you can set
it up while on the ground, forget it, and fly all day without
exhausting either power or HD space. You'll need video editing
software to extract the few nuggets of great footage buried in 8 hours
of recording. I use Pinnacle Studio 10 for editing. Works well for
me.
I'd really enjoy hearing from pilots who have produced inflight
video, or fabricated various mounts. I'm new to the inflight aspect,
and would like any ideas I could get. RON W