My girlfriend came out to the airport tonight with the camera and snapped some shots of me returning from an aerobatics session - it's her first time taking pictures of airplanes in flight, the lighting was poor for in-flight shots, the small and fast Pitts is a hard target, and she only had the 200mm lens on, but I'm happy with the results - bless her heart. [edit] I've added a couple screen grabs from the helmet camera view during the landing to show you a little of the onboard view.
Landing into the Sunset makes the already blind Pitts pilot even more blind than usual. . .which is to say, pretty blind!
Turning onto final approach for runway 25R - the last time I can see the airport.
A moment later, completing the base to final turn. 110 mph and 1,000 feet AGL and power at idle.
A little slip helps to get the nose out of the way enough to see the buildings on the North side of the airport enough to tell me that the airport is still where I think it is. Somewhere about half-way down the shadowy portion of the front instrument panel is the point at which I'll touchdown. In a moment I will be unable to see the airport at all unless I transition to a deep slip.
No runway in sight, no airport in sight for that matter. . .use the force Luke! (Note that the helmet camera actually can "see" much better than the pilot can, as the camera is further up and to the left of my eyes.).
Now slip the other way to see nobody is entering the runway from the left side.
A little right turn offset coupled with a shallow left wing low slip for one last check that the taxiways to the left side of the runway are clear and that there is no ground traffic about to enter the runway. If I didn't make the turn before the slip the slip would need to be very extreme to get the nose out of the way enough to see anything, the descent rate of the Pitts in a slip will more than double - and it already feels like it's coming down like the space shuttle when doing power off approaches.
Lined up and crossing over the numbers. . .
. . .about to raise the nose for the landing flare - and become even MORE blind!
A little crosswind correction going on. . .
S-Turning back to the hangar. . .it's the only way to see any of the taxiway in a Pitts.
I was trying out the ContourHD helmet camera on this flight and you can see it and the contraption I've rigged to clamp it to a headset in some of these.
Canopy opening sequence:
Unlock it with the black knob on the cross brace.
Slide the canopy back a couple inches until it reaches the aft stops.
And then it opens like a clamshell and rests against a stop on the top right wing.
The fun meter is pegged at +6G and the not so fun side of the meter reads -3G. No it's not beyond the red line, it just looks that way due to angle of the camera (parallax error).
