Do-it-Dave and I finally succumbed to the irresistible urge to purchase cameras for our bikes to record our ride outs. That nice chap Tim at Pashnit did us a cracking price on two GoPro HD cameras plus mounting brackets and today was the first day without snow, rain, sleet, other generally horrible weather so we could try them out.
There are enough brackets in the kit that comes with the camera to mount it in almost any place on you or the bike but I've gone for the helmet mounted option for the moment.
The main issue with helmet cam is that you can't tell when it's lined up correctly. However, with the aid of a laser pen from eBay (£2 in my hand) and two squares of velcro you have BikerHux of Borg, now with laser targetting.
You can see it's attached to the side of the camera and the dot just to the left of my head is the laser. Before a rideout this lets you line up on the garage door and lock off all the bolts before popping the pointer in your pocket and heading off at high(*) speed.
(*) Not actually high speed officer.
Dave has gone for the side mounted helmet cam and also a mounting bracket on the front brake master cylinder for a bike mounted forward shot (the same position on my bike gives you a lovely view of a light smoke windscreen but his just pokes round the edge).
The first ride out (after bacon and sausage butty rations were consumed) just took us on a loop out to the dual carriageway and back again to check all the alignments. As we were about to pull off the drive a police car drove past, and then as we headed out it had done a spin round the roundabout at the end of the road to follow us. Unfortunately for him, we'd turned the opposite way. Better luck next time mate :p
A spin up onto the A428 gave nice straight and emptyish roads where I could overtake dave and he could overtake me getting some nice passing shots.
Me passing Dave. Sights you don't see too often.
After passing Dave we did a loop round the next roundabout to come back again and got some nice knee down action of BikerHux.
A loop around the roundabout brought us back again and up to the police, yet again who were camped out, for safety reasons, nothing to do with revenue generation, behind some trees trying to catch speeders on the dual carriageway.
They might be slightly less visible if they didn't have a large arrow with POLICE on the top of it ;-)
Just round the corner I spotted yet another of their chums, this time on a bike, pulling onto the next roundabout. I saw the exit he came on at so had a pretty good idea he where he was going, but the sneaky bugger did a 360 so I had to stop at the roundabout. They were obviously out to try and trip people up. Grrrr.
Move along now. Nothing to see here. No naughty bikers. He's gone .... spank it!!!!!
Dave was obviously ready for another cuppa and a sandwich as he pulled a cheeky overtaking manoeuvre, complete with a nice backfire on the way back to Chez Hux .
After cups of tea were brewed we played back the video from the cameras to check the alignment of them was correct. Mine was a bit too much up in the air capturing more sky than stricly necessary and Daves just catches the front of his windshield so slight tweeks later we headed out again.
This time we got caught in a downpour but Dave-cam comes with automatic windscreen wipers (he leaned forward and wiped it with his glove). Mine on the other hand is on top of my head so I have to go fast to blow the raindrops off it. Officer.
The backroads were covered in mud, gravel, potholes and misc things not conducive to bimbling along on bike so we took it gently on this route.
Dave caught me up at the junction here and lulled me into a false sense of security.
As I pulled out gently (missus) he spanked the arse off his bike and headed off at warp speed into the distance leaving me chuckling merrily.
By now, toasted sandwiches were calling so we attended to that and checked the footage of the 2nd ride before heading out on the last and longest ride. This was out past cambridge, hopping off the A14 towards Newmarket for some nice sweeping bends.
View Newmarket and A11 in a larger map
Coming back up the M11, one of the boys in blue was doing 71 mph and watching for people overtaking him which stacked the traffic up no end. Ho Hum. Dave drove past him at 72 mph but I just sat and waited till he turned off before "making progress". The rain then started so I headed straight home while Dave made a dash for his garage making it just as the rain got heavy. I meanwhile did 10 miles in the spin cycle up the dual carraigeway and sat drying off while reviewing the days footage.
All in all the quality of the footage is really good. On full HD (1920x1080) it's churning out 100 MB per minute which means a 16 GB card won't be full before the battery runs out (or you need to stop for a wee, whichever comes first). Now we just need some nice weather to go for longer rides and gets some movies of knee down action. Roll on Spring!!!
