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I've always wanted to film the footage from the XR2 at Sprints and Hillclimbs. It relays to others just what the sport is all about, and it acts as a great aide memoir, for when you revisit a circuit, so you can quickly see the braking and turn in points from your last trip. Video is also great for showing just where time can be made up. For instance, you may miss an apex, because you carry too much speed in to a corner. The video shows all the faults of every run.
This guide gives instructions on installing and using a video camera on my Fiesta. The directions can be followed on any car. The equipment I've chosen is readily available off the Internet, and a lot cheaper than the kits that some companies sell. It is also lightweight and very portable, and childs play to use.
You will need:
- Lipstick/Pen/Bullet Camera (all the same thing, just different names)
- Solid state video recorder (solid state means no moving parts)
- A bullet camera mount (a method of attaching the camera to the car)
- An Electret microphone to record the sound
The camera I chose came from www.sports-camera.com. It is a high quality 480 line composite signal camera, which is powered from the +12V supply in the car. You could use the battery holder supplied with the camera, but 8 x AA batteries adds unnecessary weight.
The picture signal is quite important. In the UK and Europe, you should choose PAL, and in the States, choose NTSC. Note: Choose the signal type to match your recorder.
A video recorder is the next item you need to find. I've used the JXD 689 digital recorder. This device, which weighs just 115 grammes, stores video in MPEG4 format on SD/MMC memory cards.  It also records sound in stereo. The picture format is 320 x 240 pixels at over 25 frames per second (fps). It has a rechargeable battery, which lasts an hour or so, depending on the power save settings that you've chosen. eg you can turn the screen off after 30 seconds, to conserve energy. I've also fitted a larger memory card. The recorder comes with 512MB of on board memory, and this gives a recording time of around 2 hours of video.
A microphone is supplied with the sports-camera.com camera. However I've found that it is far too sensitive to use on my Fiesta, as the sound ends up distorted, due to the excessive volume inside the car. I'd tried mounting the mic in foam, and even mounting it under the car away from the noise, but its still far too sensitive. So I've bought an Electret microphone (part number BV57) from www.maplin.co.uk. An Electret mic is one that has a small battery inside. The mic has an on-off switch on the side, so you need to remember to turn it on before trying to record, otherwise you'll have no sound. Battery life is very good though, so even if you forget to turn it off the battery wont go flat in a few hours. Most types of electret microphones will work with a solid state video recorder. Its up to you how much you want to spend, the one I chose was around £20.
The place and mechanism for mounting the camera are equally important. I bought the Demon Tweeks lipstick/bullet camera mounting kit, but now that I've seen how its put together, its easy to see how you could source the parts from an engineering parts supplier (eg Ruland aluminium collar clamps from www.rswww.com) for a fraction of the cost. The camera does need to be vibration free, and I've discovered that the roll cage isn't a great place to mount it using the Demon Tweeks mount. The picture suffers from a lot of interference due to the vibration picked up by the lipstick\bullet camera. You need to get the camera as high up as possible so that it points down towards the ground. Otherwise if you turn a corner and drive in to sunlight, you are likely to find that the camera doesn't cope well with the change in light levels, and therefore the image will appear either dark or washed out. Mounting the camera high up, and pointing it downwards will reduce this phenomenon.
In 2006 I moved my camera from the rollcage to a spot at front of the car below the near side headlamp, where it records a perspective closer to the ground. This gives a better appreciation for the speed, and shows more detail than when it was mounted inside the car. However it is still mounted on the near side, instead of the offside (ie not the same side of the car that the driver sits) so some of the lines taken are shown from the passengers POV.
The video recorder should also be mounted safely inside the car. Otherwise you could fail scrutineering if the camera or the recorder looks like they could cause injury to occupants in the event of an accident.
This is the JXD recorder/media player, against a SD Memory card for size comparison.
April 2007
 Recently Oregon Scientific has released this new recorder, the Action Cam. For a penny less than £100, it records in high resolution, and stores the clip directly on to SDRAM. The unit doesn't feature a view finder nor a screen, but it is relatively cheap and could be a solution worth investigating.
The camera mount
Below are some pictures showing close ups of the camera mount
(just in case you wanted to make your own)
On board camera in action
The following video clips were recorded using the equipment listed above. All recorded in Standard Play. The 2006 onwards clips are recorded on the JXD recorder. All the clips up to 2006 were recorded on the Mustek. I converted the ASF files from the recorder in to Video for broadband format, (340 Kbps, 320x240, 25fps) using the Windows Movie Maker 2.0 application (available free with Windows XP). The quality of the video recorded by the JXD and the Mustek is far higher than the format of the clips below. But to keep the download size reasonable I convert the files to the broadband 512KBps format. Some clips are also hosted on youtube.com, under my username of A269FEJ.
Note: The older the clip, the worse the sound quality. I started off with the microphone supplied with the camera, and gradually moved over to using an Electret microphone, which improves the quality by several orders of magnitude.
 Barkston Heath, August 13th 2006 1st timed run, in monsoon conditions, 77s (7.6MB).
I've shown this clip for a bit of fun really. Note the marshals doing each others hoods up whilst I was held at the start line, and the amount of water on the track. It was without doubt, the wettest lap I've ever had to compete on. Listen out for the wheelspin off the line, in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gears.
Barkston Heath, August 13th 2006 Fastest timed run, wet, 65s (5.1MB)
 Cadwell Park, June 2006. Fastest timed run, 104.51s (7.24MB)
 Curborough sprint double lapper, July 17th 2005, 2nd timed run, New PB 64.73s (6.7MB)
 Shelsley Walsh hillclimb, July 2nd 2005, 2nd timed run, New PB 36.61 (6.0MB)
 Loton Park Hillclimb, September 19th 2004, 1st practice run, New PB 65.25s (4.47MB)
 Harewood Hillclimb, August 29th 2004, 2nd timed run, New PB 68.45s (5.04MB)
 3 Sisters Sprint, August 14th 2004, 1st timed run, 50.79s (4.16MB)
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