{"id":23172,"date":"2024-09-25T13:24:15","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T11:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=23172"},"modified":"2024-09-25T13:27:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T11:27:16","slug":"gobsmacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/gobsmacked\/","title":{"rendered":"Gobsmacked!"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know what it’s like, when you spot a product on Aliexpress or Temu and you buy it, then when it turns up it turns out to be of poor quality and a waste of money? Well, this is quite the opposite.<\/p>\n

Like many GA pilots, I like making videos of my flights and that’s become a lot easier these days with cameras like GoPros and other specialist video devices, some of which can now give all-around 360 degree views with no sign whatever of what they’re mounted on. I just use standard GoPros and what has always bugged me is keeping them powered up long enough to create decent videos that include the whole flight from take off to landing.<\/p>\n

The problem is that standard GoPro batteries only run for just over an hour which is nowhere near long enough for the kind of flights I do, especially when, as last month, I fly up to the UK, which takes over 6 hours of flight time. I tried using one of those jump packs that you use to start your car engine when your battery is flat but that only gave me just over 2 hours of recording time for 2 GoPros, so nowhere near long enough to record the whole flight to be edited down.<\/p>\n

After my last UK flight I happened to be looking on Amazon and a product caught my eye that appeared to offer a solution. It was a large battery bank rated at 60000 mAh that could therefore potentially run 2 GoPros for much longer, perhaps not for the whole flight but at least for a good part of it if switched off during refuelling stops etc. The only problem was that it cost 100\u20ac and that seemed to me to be a bit over-the-top for an untried solution.<\/p>\n

So as I occasionally do, I decided to check to see what was available ‘at source’ by cutting out the middle-man ie on Aliexpress and here’s what I found (the price shown in the ad is actually less<\/em> than what I ended up paying.<\/p>\n

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A quick calculation revealed that a capacity of 100000 mAh could be a game-changer with the potential of running a couple of GoPros well into double figures, and I mean well into! So with a price of only around 30\u20ac I decided to take the plunge and it arrived a couple of days ago. Here’s what it looks like.<\/p>\n

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It’s about the size of a small brick and weighs 839 gms. And although I hadn’t expected much for that sort of money, it’s good looking and surprisingly well made. It has 4 USB outlet ports and 3 alternative inputs – USB 2, USB 3 and Apple wotsitcalled, I dunno. You can charge it from a PC USB port or a mains USB charger that doesn’t come with the unit but which I’d recommend as it came 65% charged and took several hours to charge to 100%. It also incorporates a light which can be set at constant or flashing and could turn out to be very handy if and when it’s needed.<\/p>\n

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OK, but does it work? The answer is a resounding ‘YES’. I charged it to 100%, attached my GoPro 7 and GoPro 8 and left them recording, starting at just before 7.00 am. I was prepared to be disappointed but both continued running until their SD cards were full – 12 hours later, by which time the unit’s charge had only dropped to 50%. OMG, 12 hours is ample for any flight that I might do. <\/p>\n

It’s equivalent to two France\/UK flights and in theory, if I doubled the size of the SD cards I could get 24 hours of continuous, non-stop video although it would probably be slightly less as I’m sure the unit would switch off before then to conserve battery life, like my jump pack does. So where will I go from here? I have 2 extra long USB cables that I think I also found on Aliexpress for peanuts (might have been Temu) and which I run to a GoPro mounted in the cabin and from the cabin to a second GoPro mounted on a wing strut. They’re shown in the final shot, below.<\/p>\n

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With the capacity that’s been demonstrated by this unit I could easily add a third camera and I’ll start by experimenting with one of the ‘cheap Chinese’ 4k sportscam cameras that I already have mounted in the cabin with both GoPros mounted externally. If it works out I’ll probably then acquire another GoPro for quality, or an alternative, something like DJI. It looks as though another new video world is about to open to be explored!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know what it’s like, when you spot a product on Aliexpress or Temu and you buy it, then when it turns up it turns out to be of poor quality and a waste of money? Well, this is quite the opposite. Like many GA pilots, I like making videos of my flights and that’s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23172"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23183,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23172\/revisions\/23183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}