Flight over Yosemite! (And er, first mid-air emergency)

[gyrokam]

Hi Paul;
I notice wires leading into (or out of) your balaclava under your nose.
Were those to a headset or heating element?
-Kurt

 

[chipchap42]

It might be time to consider fitting a cargo net for the rear seat area.

Or maybe a Cargo Pod on one of the landing gear legs.
Holds about as much as a 5-gallon pail.

I didn't know about those - that looks really interesting. Thx for the recommendation. Anyone else used them?

 

[chipchap42]

Hi Paul;
I notice wires leading into (or out of) your balaclava under your nose.
Were those to a headset or heating element?
-Kurt

Kurt,

they lead to Bose Quiet Comfort earpieces. It's a semi-customized solution I made when I discovered it was hard to hear ATC with the standard passive DC headsets and the like. The full solution I evolved is:
1. Bose QuietComfort 20 earpieces worn in the ear. They have built in noise cancelling and work really well, provided they are protected from the wind.
https://www.amazon.com/Bose-QuietComfort-Acoustic-Cancelling-Headphones/dp/B00D429Y12/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1489613323&sr=8-3&keywords=bose+quietcomfort+20
2. Passive, standard Dave Clark 13.4 headset worn over the top. There's sufficient clearance in the earcups of the DC headset to mean they are not pressing on the Bose units.
3. Open-air cockpit microphone. PA-9EHN from Pilot Communications. Much better than the standard DC mic in an open cockpit.
4. Adaptor lead. This was the trickier bit as the 1/4" RCA plug is mono and the Bose uses a 3.5mm jack. I built a custom lead with 2x 12.5kOhm resistors in it to reduce the output from the intercom and match to the Bose. I can provide more details if you want them. Took a few mins with a soldering iron, plus i needed a 3.5mm female inline stereo socket and a 1'4" mono PCA plug - all available from Amazon etc.

My partner and I use this solution when flying and it's really good - comfortable enough for long trips, works in open cockpit, (unlike normal, very expensive aviation noice-cancelling headsets from Bose and Lightspeed) and way better sound isolation than anything else I've found. The Bose headphones cost $250 but I had them anyway, and also already had the DC headset - this was the best way of combining what I had.

Cheers,
Paul.

 

[chipchap42]

Loved it ... gave a great feeling of the experience & height! What camera are you using ... on a selfie stick??? How do you secure it when flying with both hands!?

Chris,

thanks. It's a standard GoPro Hero 4, on a GoPro stick with a tether on it. Frankly I don't have enough hands, so I've got one hand on the cyclic and one on the camera, so I can't control the throttle at the same time, so I don't use the camera when I need to be doing that.

Interestingly Google (YouTube) has started offering to apply state-of-the-art steadying algorithms to videos now, and I took that option. Although I did my best to hold the camera steady, in a gyro that's hard, as you know, and the before/after results look quite different - the YouTube one is significantly smoother after the algorithms did their thing.

Cheers,
Paul.

Cheers,
Paul.

 

[magknight]

The YouTube stability algorithm works pretty well, but you'll see some wacky effects like clouds wobbling, etc. Like check out the canopy on my second video. I promise it's not soft plastic! The first video is just a GoPro stuck to the nose of an MTO, the second is a GoPro on the mast of the Arrowcopter.

https://youtu.be/E2gfiU0B2hc


https://youtu.be/WaRv8qpXkbk?t=1m21s

 

[All_In]

Yaw Mon now that be trip'n!
What a great flight. I've flown it in FW's many, many, times and it never gets old.
The place is magical just as the Indian's claim.

We got to land there once and retrieve a forced landing of a Cessna back in the 80's.
Never saw a soul but had all the paper work just in case my brother fixed her and we flew her out in one day.