I am flying to CO this weekend and a friend is loaning me his gopro HD. What is the safest mount option with very little permanent modification and risk of losing a camera I do not own? I have a converted t/w and there is still an old metal piece under the cowling were the nose gear used to be, but was worried about heat there and prop blasts.

Would love to get some great footage this weekend of the mountains, and the flyin without having to cough up 300 bucks for a camera plummeting thousands of feet to the ground.

I have used a lot of mounts, and the camera has only let loose once.

Be creative, as long as the mount is sturdy it will hold in the air. But, when in doubt, attach a safety sting to it (when my HD170 let loose I had a string on it, it just tucked back into the wind stream and stayed put).

The biggest downside to a crappy mount is the vibration and wind, which will ruin your video.

I'll take a look at it when you get here.

i was considering connecting some 550 cord to it just in case.

thanks matt, looking forward to the trip.

I just received a GOPro cam and the suction cup mount worked great! Stuck it right behind the pilots door on the float plane and it never moved....it did great with vibration, no fog either during the rain we encountered. I have some great video to boot! I didn't hook anything else to it, although looking back I will next time use some gorilla tape or something similar to hold it down for good measure. I was worried about stringing it along because of it flopping around in the case that it does disconnect but as someone mentioned prior it'll just stay put...

Pad your lift strut/jury strut junction, and take a 3 to 5' length of tubing of the right dia.(3/4" or 7/8" I think, what ever it is I had the right size in the junk pile) and duct tape into place so it's cantalevered forward. That way you'd be out of most if not all the prop view. Do it on the left side and you can look out the cockpit and see the red/green light that tells you what's going on with the camera. I use the stock tube mount that came with the camera, have hit HARD more then once, no problems.

If you have time, make a new temporary inspection plate & screw it right to that. outboard of the strut out of prop arc would be best.

L-19 wrote:If you have time, make a new temporary inspection plate & screw it right to that. outboard of the strut out of prop arc would be best.

That's exactly what I'll be doing on my Bonanza. I will put it under the left wing near the flap/aileron junction then aim it slightly towards the nose so you can see the wheels go up and down.

If you scroll down this website, you can see some pictures of a homemade mount which I made for the wing strut and an image of the GoPro, attached with the adhesive mount to the elevator:
http://www.vimeo.com/18855219

I also have the suction mount, but don't use it outside the aircraft, as I am scared that it comes off, in case the seal is slightly leaking. I also figured that the suction mount tends to increase vibration issues because of the relatively soft base and the long arm.
The adhesive mount however is incredible - the sheet aluminum would bend before the mount comes off. But then again, it can be easily and completely removed by cutting the foam adhesive with a slim cutter knife.

This RAM mount is an alternate option to mount the camera to the wing strut:
http://www.ram-mount.com/CatalogResults/PartDetails/tabid/63/partid/082065077045066045049048056066085/Default.aspx

This is another mount with which I have some experience: generally rock solid, due to the required arm it however also tends to have some vibration issues, which cause nasty wobbling effects on the GoPro footage.

Cheers,

Oliver