This guy showed up on one of the railfan discussion boards I monitor.

http://www.vimeo.com/10599330

Turn the HD feature off on the screen for most computers and connections, and hang on.

I'm not sure if you file this under "opportunities" or "Problems" mentally, but if you see (obvously you won't hear this one!) an RC video helicopter following your train or flying the property....here's what can be done, given money and skill. And pretty much off-the-shelf stuff. It literally is an unarmed civilian "predator" shooting HD video. The quality of the video and the quiet, small platform, got my attention.

Obviously when you can fly six inches off the ground and through an 8' wide door this can have issues. It 'looks' like the operator has to be pretty darn close, but if the radio is that sophisticated it may have real-time pilot video feedback just like a Predator. His control of that thing is incredible, even if 'crashing is not an option'.

I think for excursion railroads there's opportunities for great new video views as long as they don't crash into somebody or something, but the first time one of these sends back a video out of UP's Bailey Yard....there will be a whole new breed of countermeasures, legal and physical. For now the price and skill level is a holdback.

The railfan in me wants this thing chasing a steam locomotive from right beside the cab, the railroader wants to have a 12-gauge shotgun handy, and the consultant side is trying to figure out how much video costs and what size birdshot would work best...

I see a new rating in the miltary, RC Model Pilot, E-4, E-5 etc. Wonder how this guy handles heat like in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Later!
Mr. Ed

This is cheaper then one might think although you get what you pay for here are some train videos recorded in smiler fashion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gViGBrPviss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O37PER8iTE

Quite well, actually, as drones of this size have been in use out here for quite some time. They're especially useful in villages and urban areas, where their small size allows them to quite literally fly over the heads of the bad guys without being noticed and without having to worry about other aircraft. They're also easy to operate, so a soldier or Marine doesn't need much training to fly one; future versions will be fully autonomous and will be controlled by keyboard or pointing device (much like the larger UAVs) so there won't even be a need to actually fly them. There's even been talk of developing armed versions which might either have a "suicide charge" that could take out vehicles or insurgents or something like a single-shot grenade launcher that could be used against the same types of targets.

In some places, you'll need a permit for using one due in great part to the danger involved -- those blades are as deadly as the big ones.

A production company in Canada had plans to use a 5D armed chopper during the Winter Olympics before it nose dived into a pine tree.

KL

Beats my idea of using a bucket truck for high-angle shots. The chopper seems to be a lot smoother for shooting video than the airplane. Oh, yeah, and you could get your aerial video without ruining other people's ground video with helicopter noise! (TO)

They won't be much of a problem, at least not any time soon. I've been researching them for other photo work, but the prices are still quite high, and it take some nerves of steel to strap $5k worth of camera to $25k worth of helicopter and hope you don't go "Oh crap, power lines!" bzzapp!!!

However, even if you local foamer say "I'll drop $20k on this, they won't be pacing old #8 for very long, the battery life is dismal for the ones I saw, with maybe 10 to 15 minutes tops.

So I don't think the next runby will have them dogfighting quite yet, nor will you see some guy sitting inside a dome car filming himself from his personal chopper.

Fly it in the side door of the baggage car hauled by the moving train being filmed, for rebatterying!

Fly it to a docking port installed on the sand box, wired to the turbo generator, and pi$$ off all the pacers.

That's like saying because the cameras James Cameron used to film Avatar were over $100k we won't see rail fans filming trains. This is not very expensive to do in fact this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0QJ063A04w was done with a Trex 500 helicopter (these seem to sell for around $500) and a sony cybershot digital camera (around $300) that is around $800 worth of equipment, compair that to a HO OMI UP Union Pacific #4005 4-8-8-4 Big Boy ($1795) and I can easily see a foamer doing something like this.

Those YouTube videos were interesting..if comparatively low quality (and dizzying!)..and flying one into a live railroad yard (and darn close to powerlines!) is exactly what I meant. The only difference is the size of the copter, and the quality of the payload.

I hadn't thought about the powerlines!

When they filmed "Unstoppable" up here this last fall, they had a magnificent Bell chopper pilot flying the camera right down the ROW with just a few feet of clearance. I can't imagine what that cost, but the clarity of the HD video from that rig I got the link to... I think its entirely possible to do nearly that well with the tiny remote electric one.

I spoke (well, online) with someone who I know is a R/C hobbyist and a live-steam fan. He raised one valid point: to produce anything better than a goofy YouTube video or an entry to "America's Dumbest Home Videos" with a rig like this, you need two people: a pilot and a camera operator, just like a road chase video needs a driver and a camera operator for quality video. Trying to control both is like talking on a cell phone while driving; eventually you'll come to grief.

If you really have a once-in-a-lifetime event--say, two sets of restored Burlington diesels passing each other in opposite directions at speed on the Burlington "racetrack" out of Chicago on separate excursions--you're just going to rent a real helicopter and video crew.