What you are about to read may make you excited. To say I am excited would be an understatement. I am so excited I could pee my pants with all the excitement. Did I mention I’m excited?

As a young lad I dreamed of two things – flying and cameras. Everything else was just filler or distraction. My dream job was to be strapped to a studio camera at the end of a long crane, hurtling across a concert. When Star Wars ONE came out, and Luke and Han Solo were fending off tie-fighters in the Millennium Falcon, whizzing around in their flying seats, I was bang into that too. I’m pretty sure every still-breathing-male is.

So when the chance came to stick a camera in the nose of a plane, and fly it ‘virtually’ using virtual reality goggles… suffice to say it’s proving to be a life altering experience. And I haven’t even flown the thing yet.

‘Travatar’ is the primary reason I started this blog. It’s the idea that with a few bits of readily available equipment, consumer versions of the same technology used by the military in UAV’s, you can design and build your own ‘Travelling Avatar’, or Travatar – a device that let’s you fly… anywhere you want to go.

Burning Man at night

The project came about because of a visit to Burning Man later this year. If you’ve not heard of Burning Man – it’s a week long explosion of creativity in the desert that sees participants literally build a city in a few days for its 60,000 inhabitants. Each participant contributes, last year mine was a cinema showing Mad Max movies and Star Wars. This year I hope to offer the ability for anyone to fly virtually across the desert.

Building a cinema (and day lounge) at Burning Man

For an idea of what I’m talking about, watch this video (below) shot from a radio controlled plane. Imagine you are controlling the plane and receiving live video to a head mounted display. That’s how this video was made.

For the past month I’ve been deep, deep in the lab making my own version of a flying camera plane. Here’s some pics of ‘Travatar’ under construction…

‘Prepping the wings’ – Slicing off marks from the moulding process.

Wing halves bonded together with extremely strong glue

Strengthening the wings with glass fibre and carbon fibre poles

Detail on the glass fibre rod which is like rebar, for added grip

Using a heated drill bit to melt a ‘tunnel’ into the foam

Cutting aluminium tube to line the tunnel

Wiring tube installed

Lining the battery bay with wood and ‘filleted’ thick super glue

Test fitting the electronics – there’s a lot!

Ergo… lots of soldering

Cutting in space for a GoPro video camera

GoPro camera housing test-fitted in the nose of the plane

Home made rig to cut foam

… for neat holes and stuff

1.5 watt video transmitter, wiring ‘bus’ and microwave antenna fitted

Custom washer and retaining clip

Test fitting the main electronics bay cover – made from aluminium sheet

So far it’s about 65% complete… Most of the airfame is done and much of the electronics – all that remains is fitting the ‘live’ video camera, the control surfaces, and covering it all in something tough and cool looking.

First test flight should be in about two weeks… all things going smoothly.