I’ve been working my way through the footage from Friday 14 May, the first real day of flying for Acro Camp. I’ve been working mostly with the wing-mounted and other exterior camera footage over the last week. But, this evening, I began going through some of the footage from the in-cockpit cameras as well.

I’ve decided that no human has ever had more fun flying aerobatics (or doing anything else) than Paul Berliner. I could tell that he was smiling from the wing cam footage, but the in-cockpit cameras really tell the story. There are even times that I can hear min shouting over the engine noise on the ContourHD camera (and I don’t have the intercom audio synched up yet, so it’s strictly ambient sound for now). The frame grab above is Paul’s reaction to his very first loop. I think they heard about it in the tower back at Pontiac. Without the need for the radio.

It turns out that Paul has a G-face as well. In fact, I think it’s the same as his zero-G face. Here’s he’s pulling up for his second loop. Paul pulls a little less hard on the loops than Jim, but not much less. He got nice round shapes out of the loops that he did. I can’t tell whether Barry’s helping, but I suspect that it’s mostly Paul.

Michelle also got up at the end of the day for some pattern work in the Citabria. I discovered some issues with the ContourHD shutter artifacting when the prop shadow falls across the pilot’s face. It’s a little like skinny horizontal Venetian blinds. But it’s almost worth it when you get sun angles like this one.

I’m still having a good time with the extent to which the IPs seem to pay attention to the camera. Here, Barry gives a thumbs-up just before taxiing.

I understand that there were some pretty good conversations in the cockpit, as well, and I’m just beginning to get around to going through the intercom audio. I think I’ll do that once I get it synched up with the video. I’ll put together a multiclip for each flight and then watch each flight all the way though one camera angle at a time. It’ll be time-consuming, but it’s really the only way to get the whole story and identify all of the most interesting/compelling/beautiful moments.