Flying high in the French Alps

At 1400m and with snow-capped peak of Mont Blanc looming large in the background, Plaine Joux is the perfect setting to host a meeting for large scale helicopter enthusiasts. This weekend 13&14 October 2012, the Club des Gypaetes de Passy Mont-Blanc hosted its annual helicopter meeting. With fantastic organisation, great displays of piloting skills, the magnificent setting and a bit of luck with the weather it really turned out to be a great event.

I'm no roving reporter, so I didn't go around getting names of pilots or details about their models, so I'll just have to let the pictures do the talking. The quantity of models on display was truly amazing and the amount of scale detail in some of the builds really had to be seen to be believed. The livery of many of the models has clearly been influenced by the mountains and there were numerous helicopters in the colours of both the French and Swiss mountain rescue service.

Of course no meeting would be complete without someone there to film it and my friend Guillaume was on hand with his trusty Vortex-8 Octocopter to capture all the action. At over 1m motor to motor this is one really big model and it certainly drew a lot of attention from the crowds of people that came to enjoy the meeting. Today I spotted that he's recently purchased 2 large Pelican cases to transport all of his equipment and it certainly makes life easier for transporting all the required equipment safely to a shoot. The case with all the Lipos needs 2 people to lift it though!!!

Notice the silicone anti-vibration mounts under the camera mount plate. These are expensive to buy, but are really effective at reducing vibration to an absolute minimum. The Sony cx740 produces outstanding high definition images and today was the first try of the new wide angle lens, so I'm looking forward to seeing the results. To help line up the images there's an ImmersionRC transmitter and Duo5800 receiver with 2 patch antennas and a 9" screen. Slightly obsessed with carbon fibre, even the sun shield is made of 1mm carbon fibre plate. Did you spot the 2 large Pelicases under the table?

 Here's a little video that I made (note to self: must get better at filming and editing) of the event and a few more pictures from this fabulous weekend in the mountains. Thanks to the Club D'aéromodélisme Les Gypaetes for once again hosting such a great event.