David Hughes

If you want to put your mind at rest then take to Brian Busbee and get it inspected. Every time I see him there seems to be one of these sitting on his bench getting overhauled. He should be able to tell you if it is about to pop. Brian. 07754 722980

Possible soloution. http://www.gizmag.com/trakdot-luggage-tracker/25671/ Maybe with a system like this installed insurance companies will lower their price?

What you said Victor, you forgot to mention rollerblades. Not sure it will scale up very well to alexa size weight though.

I have seen the AR on numerous occasions and flown it myself a few times. It is a truly remarkable thing of great engineering beauty, a lot of thought went into Howards' design and we can all thank him for that. Where does the C of G sit within the rings of an AR? From what I remember it is difficult to adjust this because of the rings. It should be easier to adjust this axis to almost perfect balance and make less work for the rotation motor. From what I remember Lyns' rig also had a motor at the rear for rotation around the lens axis and was held in place by some carbon fiber rods similar to this. I just think unfortunately for some the writing is on the wall. Open source will give us all the option to fly our sleds this way in very short time, sure It won't be applicable to all cameras and the mechanisms wont be as elegant as and AR. just because it's open sourced doesn't necessarily mean it has to be half arsed, just look at the Multi copter progress in the past few years. Dave

Give it a year or 3 and this will be as cheep as chips. That's the beauty of open source. The gyro boards have been getting so good over the last few years with loads of coders all pooling resources working on improving on the software. The brushless motors have been the recent breakthrough, they are custom wound for some reason. You take a perfectly good brushless motor cheep from China, unwind it and then wind with your your custom wire to get the smoothness you need. Won't be long before someone in the Multi Rotor community gets the factory in China to pre-wind them to our specification. All you need after that is to cut your own bits of cheep Chinese carbon and a few fixtures and you will have a your own AR. Only more responsive with another axis of correction. Lyn was just dealing with the tech that he had available, things have progressed so far in such a short time it's incredible. All those copter guys with their knowledge of this method will be cleaning up with custom rigs that we can put on our sleds. No one will be able to patent this. I have been looking for the Photos I saw here of Lyn with his revolution all those years (10?) ago but I can't seem to find them. Can anyone dig out a link?

Thomas. Canon EOS 1DC and a Canon EFCine Prime 24mm 1.3 (at 1.3!) and a Zeiss 18mm CP.2 for the aerial footage

To quote from their website "The first unit that is being released – the M10 – supports a camera up 10 pounds with accessories. That equates to a DSLR with a lot of accessories or a bare Epic and prime lens. We’ve been using the Epic and the Canon primes and Zeiss CP.2 lenses all week on a commercial without a hitch. A future version the M20 is slated to support an Alexa or Epic package w/ zoom, price and date TBD." http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2013/04/04/movi-a-revolutionary-handheld-stabilized-system-takes-flight/ I assume that the M20 is for a 20 pound payload. I don't think that there will be a big market for this at least without an Easy rig or Klassen suspender, and I'm sure I'm not alone in hating that method.

Thomas what is a Klassen Fixture?

I have used my skates a few times with cameras over the years and this is exactly what you would need to do it properly. Without it horizons are all over the place. Hanging on to the back of taxis is how i used to get up hills and I can assure you in London traffic it isn't for the feint hearted. There aren't many situations where rolerblading is practical the surface must be smooth, you must have safe runoff areas if you need to bail and a slight downhill incline helps a lot. But this does open up a whole new set of possibilities where skates will be the appropriate way to do things. The way the camera is held in the rig looks similar to the original alien design by Lyn, the camera is held from underneath with the horizon servo directly behind the camera and not in rings as per the AR. This should adapt quite easily to our everyday sleds to get AR like shots at least with smaller cameras. Of course Howards ring design will probably still be needed for full body Alexas and heavier stuff. Perhaps something similar to this is what MKV has in the pipeline for the future. Its one thing to put a camera on your shoulder to go handheld but entirely different to be holding 20-30 pounds at arms length for extended periods of time take after take. You would need to have back muscles as strong as a steadicam operator anyway and biceps like Stalone. Should be perfect with a scaled down Epic. Thomas I can teach you to skate if have a few hours free. Dave.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what is it about this rig that would be equivalent to a steadicam in any way. http://www.bblist.co.uk/item.php?item=30916 any ideas? I suppose even just the word "Steadicam" conjures up all sorts of promises of a spectacular, magical, fluid, floating camera moves, everyone is going to want to have this trick in their bag of tricks. Especially when they are so cheep nowadays, I could have saved myself a fortune if only there had been similar "equivalents" when I bought my rig. :D

Swim like a fish? no way that's so oldschool. Fly like a bird instead. Ever tried Paragliding anyone? It will keep you fit but isnt too strenuous, once you have a wing and a nice hill nearby it is basically free, Spain has good weather for it and it will cure any fear you have of heights. It's the biggest thrill to be flying along a ridge with the birds, similar to scuba in that you are in a totally alien environment into which humans rarley venture. Your first couple of flights will be sometimes scary but once you come to terms with the fact that you are flying through the air with nothing below your feet and only a piece of nylon and some strings keeping you up there, and realize that you are actually quite safe there is no better way to take your mind off stress. You will not be able to think about anything else even for hours after you have landed. People will constantly suggest to you that you should take your steadicam up with you when you fly but I would strongly advise against this as it is sure to lead to advanced symptoms of dying or at the very least loads of ugly pain. "Come fly with me lets fly lets fly away" Dave.

Hi James. I have a MK-V mk1 Gimbal lying around I think that would be an upgrade in your case. It is for a 1.75 inch post diameter though, I'm not sure what the post size is on an efp but maybe you could get a sleve made up. let me know if i can be of any help. Dave.

Hi Ed. Interesting question I can't help you with any answers myself but Im sure if you give the friendly people at Bickers a call they should be able to answer any questions you have. http://www.bickers.co.uk/ or maybe try the gtc forum someone there is sure to have some ideas. http://www.gtc.org.uk/ Dave.