I put this plane together as an experiment to find a good configuration for an aircraft that would allow the camera to point foward in the directiton of travel, thereby making it easier to position the aircraft for a desired shot. I also wanted a plane capable of carrying a reasonable weight and have space to experiment with different ideas for camera control and so on. The result is what I have called the Platform, which consists of a solid piece of pink foam for the fuselage along with a carbon-fibre boom and foam t-tail. The wing is from a full size Skywalker plane which is popular for aerial photography, and is equipped with ailerons and flaps which help the plane slow down while creating additional lift that allows it to stay airborne.
The motor is mounted on the fuselage at the rear of the wing in a 'pusher' configuration and this frees up the front of the fuselage to mount the camera. At the front of the wing on the fuselage there are two high-mounted wooden supports into the ends of which slots a wooden cradle that carries the camera in a forward facing position. A full-frame cradle that surrounds the camera can be used if servos are to be mounted to it for camera activation, or a half-frame cradle can be used for Canon cameras using CHDK. This system allows different cameras to be easily mounted to the plane as desired. In addition, the fuselage surface around the cradle has been covered with velcro which makes it easy to attach and remove various camera control circuits and the video transmitter.
