Richard Olson had dreams of being a pilot ever since he was a kid. Breaking the bonds of Earth, defying gravity and launching himself above the clouds, riding on air. He has been given many opportunities to be a passenger on an airplane, but it's just not the same as actually flying one yourself. As a pilot you're the one out there defying gravity. As a passenger, you're simply Lois Lane to Superman. Superman gets to do all the actual work, all you can do is ride along. Since he couldn't fly a plane himself, instead he made a hobby of flying remote controlled planes and gliders.

"The radio is a Tower Hobbies 4FM 4 Channel Radio," Richard told us, "and operates on 72Mhz and 3-4 watts of power, giving it approximately one to two miles of range." Or another way of putting it would be, "Basically you have control of the plane as far as you can see it and then some."

With this hobby, since he can't actually fly a real plane, Richard can fly a hobby plane by remote control. "This has been a dream come true in a way for me," Richard told us, "because I can actually fly the plane or glider around."

But still something was missing. According to Richard, what was missing was "to actually be up there to see what I could see from that vantage point."

Enter X10's XCam2. Richard set up the XCam2 in his planes and gliders, and hooked them up to a control station on the ground. Richard separated the battery pack and the camera, and then used the battery pack and camera's existing boltholes to mount them under the wings of the plane. Then he modified the battery pack, taking the 5X voltage multiplier out of the battery pack and created a power source and panel that would fit inside the plane. "This way I simply mount the camera (2 screws), plug it into the planes external power panel and flip the switch."

"At the ground I record the video to VHS and display it on a TV monitor," Richard says. "I am able to see the video in real-time, and even hear what is going on onboard the plane." From that vantage point, Richard says that he can even fly the plane from the video; although he does recommend having a spotter if you do use this method, "just in case."

There's nothing like soaring through the air, watching the ground below rise and fall as it rushes past you. But if you can't actually be there, then there's nothing like hooking up the XCam2 so that you are still part of this great rush of soaring through the sky, diving towards the ground, only to pull up at the last minute and stare straight up towards the clouds, and then look back down at the ground as it awaits your return... Oh, this is too much. Where's that airsick bag?

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Editor's Note: We've received many inquiries from this story regarding the XCam2's range. The camera's broadcast range is 100', though it is sometimes possible to get a bit more distance when there are no obstructions. There is currently no way to boost the signal.