I have wanted to stick cameras onto R/C helicopters ever since I started messing with them. Most guys seem to want to gravitate towards 3-D flying but that holds little attraction for me. I have serious respect for the tremendous skill of the pilots who are able to maintain the heli's orientation in the their mind to such a staggering degree but aesthetically it is an ugly style of flying.

For myself, having reached a stage where I could fly with relative calm, apart from the odd brain-fart and the subsequent missed heartbeat, the next step was to start attaching wireless video cameras. It has been an expensive, time-consuming process littered with failure and disappointment. By enlarge, the majority of systems advertised are rubbish. Finally, however, I am starting to get some acceptable results.

There are two major problems to overcome, quite apart from the quality of video that the camera is capable of delivering. Firstly, there is the major issue of vibration. Helicopters are riddled with it and isolating a video camera is no simple matter. The second major headache is the wireless video downlink. They ALL work ... until you start the helicopter's engine and take off. You then have to deal with all sorts of things like RF intereference from the motor or something called multi-pathing where the transmitted video signal bounces off the spinning carbon blades, which act like a big metal disc, and confuses the video receiver with a barrage of the same reflected signal several times over. And, oh yes, vibration also affects the video transmitter components ... and the camera signal .....

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