GoPro recommendations?

[0TreeLemur]

My co-pilot & wife (same person if you're curious) dropped a hint the other day of wanting a GoPro for Christmas for use while flying!   Amazingly, I got the hint.  

If you have experience, I'd love to hear recommendations.   Not the top end because we are n00bs, but useful gear for attaching to the airplane for in-flight video recording.  I would love to have some shots from outside.   Would consider used gear.   What's the minimum?   Camera, SD card and mount?  I know nothing.

Thanks!

Fred

[toto]

I’m far from an expert, but I like these mounts that connect to the tie-down ring as an intro to GoPro mounting. No adhesive required, very temporary - super easy to move/remove as desired. 

https://www.nflightcam.com/collections/mounts/products/nflightcam-tie-down-kit

[midlifeflyer]

There are a couple of tie-down mounts. @toto mentioned one from NFlightCam. A very popular one is from MyPilotPro. It's the one I would get unless to want to go the DIY route as I did. Mine is almost identical to the MyPilotPro.

This 2 minute video is with J model. If you saw my "The Clearance" video, it's what I'm using with the Ovation.  My channel has a few other examples on different airplanes.

 

[rbp]

I made my own mount which costs just a few dollars. It works perfectly. here are two videos:

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/774284087

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/774266480

the issue is that its hard to buy individual parts, so I bought packs of 10, and I have enough parts to make 4 more mounts.

I recently added a go-pro ball mount to it, which raises the price, but  I haven't flown with yet

I'll be making these available to the mooney community for cost, as soon as weather permits me to have a chance to test out the ball mount 

[Skates97]

16 minutes ago, rbp said:

I made my own mount which costs just a few dollars. It works perfectly. here are two videos:

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/774284087

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/774266480

the issue is that its hard to buy individual parts, so I bought packs of 10, and I have enough parts to make 4 more mounts.

I recently added a go-pro ball mount to it, which raises the price, but  I haven't flown with yet

I'll be making these available to the mooney community for cost, as soon as weather permits me to have a chance to test out the ball mount 

Looks like the one I made. My go to for cameras are the Drift Ghost cameras. Here's a write up I did on different cameras I have used, mounts, and cables to get the audio from your radio.

https://intothesky.com/2022/09/24/cameras-mounts-and-cables/

[rbp]

@Skates97!     these are great!   I didn't use JB Weld on mine, but I am going to get some fore sure

one thing I really appreciate about the Hero10 is the fantastic video stabilization. (see in the videos above)

[Skates97]

I like your videos, the stabilization is very good. I'm not sure the Ghost XL Pro has as effective stabilization as the Hero10 but I like the long 7 hour battery life. 

[midlifeflyer]

6 hours ago, rbp said:

I made my own mount which costs just a few dollars. It works perfectly. here are two videos:

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/774284087

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/774266480

the issue is that its hard to buy individual parts, so I bought packs of 10, and I have enough parts to make 4 more mounts.

I recently added a go-pro ball mount to it, which raises the price, but  I haven't flown with yet

I'll be making these available to the mooney community for cost, as soon as weather permits me to have a chance to test out the ball mount 

You may run into the problem I did. Perhaps you are significantly stronger than I, but I was never able to get the thumbscrew tight enough. I have a few videos in the series showing the camera rotating downward in flight I ended up using a cam clamp. It's the blue piece on the shot above from my video. Basically works like the lever clamp that keeps your front tire in a bicycle. The tests were done a J cruise speeds. With the cam clamp it doesn't even rotate at Ovation speeds.

[rbp]

9 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

You may run into the problem I did. Perhaps you are significantly stronger than I, but I was never able to get the thumbscrew tight enough. I have a few videos in the series showing the camera rotating downward in flight I ended up using a cam clamp. It's the blue piece on the shot above from my video. Basically works like the lever clamp that keeps your front tire in a bicycle. The tests were done a J cruise speeds. With the cam clamp it doesn't even rotate at Ovation speeds.

I had that problem on the first try, then I added lockwashers 

[midlifeflyer]

2 hours ago, rbp said:

I had that problem on the first try, then I added lockwashers 

There are a number of solutions but in my case at least, I already had lock washers. It wasn't loosening inflight from vibration; the entire assembly was rotating in the tiedown ring because, locked or not, it simply wasn't tight enough without the lever clamp. slower airplanes but not at higher airspeeds.

[Skates97]

With the rubber washers I've never had it move. I don't have an Ovation but if the air is smooth I let it get up to 180mph IAS on descent without it moving. 

[midlifeflyer]

3 hours ago, Skates97 said:

With the rubber washers I've never had it move. I don't have an Ovation but if the air is smooth I let it get up to 180mph IAS on descent without it moving. 

Glad it worked for you that way.