If you go on YouTube and search general aviation flying, you’ll find thousands of videos posted by pilots of their favorite flights.
And while using GoPro or Insta360 cameras to record flights for posterity is cool, those small cameras also can help general aviation in a myriad of ways, including flight training and maintenance.
That signals a shift in general aviation towards more accountability, says Dominic Martinez, president of MyGoFlight and Flight Flix.
MyGoFlight, founded about 15 years ago, specializes in iPhone and iPad mounts for general aviation cockpits. When the opportunity came up to buy Flight Flix in 2023, they jumped on it, realizing it was a “kindred business that would provide solutions to pilots and CFIs alike who want to use exterior-mounted cameras to document their flights, create cool images, share their adventures, and ultimately learn from the videos,” he says.
“Pictures tell a thousand words — that’s why CFIs who use cameras in training will reduce training time, resolve conflicts with data, and provide empirical evidence of what is going on in the cockpit,” he continues.
Training Flix
Look at any type of professional sport — from football to the Olympics — and everyone is reviewing film of the last game or last training day.
“You’re continuously learning from reviewing that film,” Martinez says. “And with our camera mounts, you can put a camera in the cockpit as well as the exterior of the plane and that gives you the ability to look at those two feeds, once you’re on the ground, to show you that when you do something in the cockpit, this is what’s happening outside.”
“But it’s not about the big things,” he adds. “It’s the small inputs that you may have missed in a busy cockpit. You’re worried about staying ahead of the plane, so you may have done something you or your instructor may have missed, but if you review your film, you will be able to catch that and correct it before it becomes a bigger issue.”
And it’s immediate evidence, he says, not just for CFIs and their students, but also for hangar flying sessions that can get heated.
Martinez notes that he and his buddies often “go back and forth” on a particular incident, and it can spur a lot of anger, as well as lead to some pilots not willing to acknowledge their mistakes.
“In some instances, that could be very harmful to the pilot and passengers,” he says. “But when someone comes out of the hangar with their laptop to show a video, you realize they were right.”
That also works for training flights, he says.
“With a video, I can show a student what they did well, as well as what they did wrong, and give them examples,” he explains.
In fact, an instructor can create a video compiling highlights from the flight — both good and bad — and send it to the student before they get back to their office or home.
“That gives them recognition that they really did well and here’s proof,” he says.
And the bad parts of a flight? The student can keep referring back to the video to practice those things that they just haven’t mastered yet.
“It provides this historical database of progression and opportunity for doing better,” he says. “There’s technique analysis to analyze the correct and incorrect inputs made by the student pilot. It identifies the areas for improvement and incorrectly applied procedures, incorrect rote memory, and correct any radio ATC interactions.”
What helps is that the cameras also can connect to your iPad or headset, he adds.
“Now not only do you have video, but you also have voice. So recording these practices provides a visual record that they can review, see what worked well, what didn’t,” he says. “It’s very powerful for people to see what they thought they did versus what they actually did.”
Filming flights also increases the efficiency of flight training, according to Martinez.
“Having video that a student can review when they’re not with their CFI is really powerful,” he continues. “Then if you find someone else that’s doing it correctly on the internet, say a YouTube video, you can send that to your student and go, ‘here’s a guy who was having your problem, and here’s how he fixed it.’”
The videos also produce accountability in flight training, he adds.
For instance, if you’re trying to choose between two CFIs, you can look at the video one gave you and see the “proof” of their teaching technique.
“This will also improve a CFI’s credibility,” he says. “If a CFI is sloppy, guess what? Now everybody sees the sloppiness.”
Not Just For Training
Many pilots use the cameras long after their earn their tickets. They can use the cameras to capture beautiful images in flight, but the videos also help them analyze their flying techniques to ensure they aren’t getting sloppy or unsafe, Martinez notes.
Others use it to ensure their landing gear is actually down, while others use the cameras to record problems with avionics or their airframe. Sharing this with maintenance personnel speeds up the process of getting the plane back in the air.
You also can make notes to yourself during the flight, noting something like ‘we need to check this aileron because I felt this and I see it on the video at 2 minutes, 52 seconds,’” he explains.
And mechanics are using the videos on post-maintenance flights to ensure everything is working as it should. It gives peace of mind to the mechanic and the aircraft owner.
And then there’s the pilots who want to share their flights with friends, family, and the world.
“If I have a camera, I want to hook it into my headset so that I can go show my wife ‘I made this really cool video flying over Mount Rainier, and here’s where my daughter squealed in delight thinking that’s the coolest thing ever.”
And with the rise of social media and the desire for many to become social influencers, the mounts help get the crisp video that resonates with viewers.
“They want to share their flying with not just their friends and family, they want to share it with the world,” Martinez says. “They are so proud of their flying, because flying is cool.”
Getting It Right
Flight Flix offers more than 50 mounts, ranging in price from $50 to $190. It also offers cases to protect cameras from prolonged vibrations from the airplane, weather, UV rays, and more.
But how can a pilot know which mount to choose?
“We learned our lesson with MyGoFlight and people not knowing which iPad they had,” he says. “There’s a hundred different models of iPads. So instead of making model-specific mounts, we looked at what surfaces or what parts are common across all airplanes, whether that’s tie-down rings or inspection covers or straps or wingtips.”
For instance if you have tie-down rings, you would go to the tie-down area on the Flight Flix website. All of the bases are universal, designed to fit any tie-down, whether it’s a wing tie-down or the hook style tie-down.
But aside from your aircraft, Martinez also asks pilots what type of videos they want to create, then what type of activity they are trying to capture.
Once a pilot describes their vision, company officials can recommend a certain mount.
Additionally, attaching the camera to the right place on your airplane requires some knowledge.
For instance, pilots need to ensure the camera isn’t impeding any controls or flaps or mounted forward of the intakes or propellers, creating potentially unsafe situations.
Martinez tells the story of a recent encounter with a pilot who wanted to put the camera on the top of his wing.
When he asked the pilot what kind of airplane he had, he discovered it was a pusher, with the propeller located behind the engine.
“I told him I don’t think you should put it in front of your propeller,” he recalls. “If the camera had fallen off, it would have gone into the propeller and I don’t think his aircraft has a parachute, so that’s not good.”
The pilot replied “Oh, I didn’t even think of that.”
Other issues are pilots using inferior materials, such as — believe it or not — duct tape.
Martinez tells those pilots it’s great to save money while flying, but “maybe we should concentrate on flying and make this a secondary thing because what we really want is safe flying.”
It’s also important that pilots understand what the FAA has to say about camera mounts. That’s why the company created a dedicated page called FAA Guide to Camera Mounts on its website, which lists the sections of the FARs that pertain to modifications and alterations.
The reward for all this? Customers constantly send in amazing pictures showing Flight Flix officials what they captured using their mounts, according to Martinez.
The photos, which are featured on the company’s website, help the company understand its customers better, but it also opens up the world to Flight Flix officials.
“They send us these amazing pictures,” he says. “We don’t have access to all these varied aircraft to jump in every morning and go take cool pictures.”
And Martinez believes that these photos and videos posted online can increase the pilot population.
“I see people looking at flying videos and when I ask if they are a pilot, many reply ‘no, I just like airplanes,’” he says. “When people see these videos, it encourages them to think, ‘if that guy can do it, I can fly too.”
For more information: FlightFlix.aero
