Steam & Excursion > 4449 aerial video

Friday morning Mason and Alco251 took to the skies with a Robinson R44 helicopter and portable gyro stabilized helicopter mount. This unit is designed for small camcorders and uses two Kenyon K8 gyros. Tomorrow our cameras will be in the cab of the 765 leaving out of Owosso. Sunday we'll be back up in the air again. The video clip is an HD and we compressed it less than last night's video. If you are on a slower speed DSL or cable line I suggest you pause the video while it loads as it is nearly 100mb in size.

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

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Todd,

Your new gyroscopic camera mount works fantastic. That is some really nice footage.

From all of us at home, thank you for taking the time to encode something after you're all dead tired at the end of the day, I know how that goes.

That sure is some great storm lighting. I like the 360 arc at the end, you can actually hear the stack talk over the chopper when you're directly overhead. Did you have a mic on board at all for sync sound later?

That's great for a portable gyro...has a little hard time compensating for roll, but 1000x better than no gyro!

At the beginning, it looks like the injector is overflowing steam?

--M

Mike Massee
Tehachapi, CA
Photography, Railroading and more..

Harlock Wrote:
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> From all of us at home, thank you for taking the
> time to encode something after you're all dead
> tired at the end of the day, I know how that goes.

It is midnight here and I am about to go to sleep. This event is an experiment to see how the folks at home like us covering things like this. If it goes well and we can see it in the membership numbers we'll take to the road more often. I can tell you this is not an inexpensive shoot, but it is worth every penny if the membership enjoys it.


> That sure is some great storm lighting. I like
> the 360 arc at the end, you can actually hear the
> stack talk over the chopper when you're directly
> overhead. Did you have a mic on board at all for
> sync sound later?
>

That is the audio we recorded as we shot it from the camera's built in microphone. I bet if we pointed a shotgun mic at the loco we would pick it up loud and clear.

> That's great for a portable gyro...has a little
> hard time compensating for roll, but 1000x better
> than no gyro!

The roll will take some practice to get down right. I haven't used it in the air yet, but I will get my chance on Sunday. When I practiced it felt a lot like a steadicam unit. When I get home I am going to run the footage through iMovie and see how the stabilization works on it. It may just take the roll out completely. No time to play with it here though.


> At the beginning, it looks like the injector is
> overflowing steam?
>
> --M

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

Todd, If you PM I can fix all of that in motion 4 for you. I Movie is going to help a little but in motion 4 you can fix all of that in a few mins. Then use final cut to clean it up a bit.. I can also do some fun stuff with Trainorders logo..

Thanks for capturing and posting this! Beautiful to see it from the air like that. Here's a view of what the airborn filming looked like from the inside front of the superdome!

Regards,
Michael

---

By all ways do more of these, great footage from the air.

Wes

THE MEMBERSHIP LOVES IT!!!!

John D

Todd,David and Mason thanks for the fine shots.Of course it is nothing new to David.BTW David are you the pilot?
That is very nice looking roadbed.What I need to know,where are you? What railroad? What direction is the train going?

Uncle Joe Oates-just east of Tampa at ACL MP 868.9

Nice work Todd...
I found myself thinking "membership does have it's privileges" while watching this... Interesting idea.

Andy

Just terrific!! I'm in Anchorage, and video is as close as I get to the Steamers.....I'd pay many bucks for a video DVD of this trip, with lots of crew shots maintaining this wonderful machine.

Todd, this is great. Keep them coming.

more, more!!!!!!!!!!!

Love the footage. Thanks! But it appears that the same footage is repeated twice in this segment. Train crosses the same road twice.

Nice. Did anyone notice how the picture-takers situated at the grade crossing seen at 1:49 were skunked by the steam plume obscuring the train?

Chico
http://www.heartlandrails.com

Cool! I was down below, near the blue water tower that shows up in the background right at the end of the video. We heard the helicopter and wondered who was filming. Now I know. :)

Jim

Interesting video. Just a little curious: How were you able to get around the FAA requirement of not going below 500' AGL?

We enjoyed watching the filming from onboard a CN doorway. Neat to see the ultralight too.

Wow...

norm1153 Wrote:
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> Interesting video. Just a little curious: How
> were you able to get around the FAA requirement of
> not going below 500' AGL?

That only applies to populated areas.

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com