I am not going to comment on whether you should or shouldn’t go down this route, but I do think some of the costs and levels of difficulty in some of these posts have been rather exaggerated to say the least!
I have flown fixed wing RC models since 1971 and much later took up RC helicopters in the days when the sophistication of the helicopters themselves, radio control equipment and gyros (for help in keeping the tail under control) was very low and flying them was much more difficult than it is today.
Today, many people start off by buying an RC ‘Flight Simulator’ (which is a bit like a computer game but very specific to flying RC models and tries to emulate the real thing) to master the basics. Practicing on a sym can be done at any time, day or night and in any weather conditions. If you crash, it’s free, just reset and away you go again. While a sim is not exactly the same as flying the real thing, after practice on a sim the step to flying an actual RC model is much easier and cheaper! Typically Simulators start at about £70 and go up to a couple of hundred pounds. With some you need to also buy a transmitter (the control box used to fly the heli) and some come with their own.
To help learn even faster, once you have a bit of experience on the sim and have made the step towards flying a real model, join a model club which has instructors. They will use a ‘buddy lead’ to connect two transmitters together so you then have dual controls (just like in a driving instructor’s car). Under the instructor’s guidance, with the security of them being to take control if you get in a muddle and with the experience gained on the sim you will soon pick it up.
One point here….although no one is actually ‘born a pilot’, some do pick the skill up faster than others.
Once you can fly the heli competently then you get in to the camera bit. Simply mounting and firing (from your transmitter) a camera under a model heli is actually quite simple to do and there are several websites illustrating how it’s done. Like everything however you can leave the basics behind and make the camera mount/operation incredibly complex and versatile if that is what you want to do. Seeing what the camera sees is also very cheap and easy to do using an on-board miniature video camera with a wireless downlink to a monitor/laptop. These can be purchased on ebay for less than £50.00.
If all the above seems too easy to be true, well of course I haven’t gone in to everything in fine detail in this post, but it’s not as expensive and as difficult as some have made out.
Now you can fly, can see what you are shooting and can control the camera, you hit the legal bits.
In the UK there are strict rules governing the use of model aircraft both for pleasure and commercial gain. There is no point in going in to them here because where you are the rules will no doubt be different.
There are many companies around the world who use RC helis for aerial photography. Some of the helis/systems are very basic and some are bespoke designs that cost a fortune. If you look on the internet it won’t take long for you to find them. Hobby fliers too do it for fun, sometimes they record just video and post the ‘in-flight movie’ on youtube.
To conclude, I am not suggesting that it will only take a couple of weeks and £200 to do it, but don’t be put off by exaggerated negative comments either.
