The ultra low budget way of sending up a camera to a reasonable altitude I think is with a kite. And I love flying kites very much. So I ventured into the KAP world.
My first design was to just use electrical tape to secure the small knock off Gopro to the kite line and send it up. My delta kite is able to pull the camera up without too much trouble. However, the camera wobbles way too much for a video. However, here is a shot from one of the flights.
KAP people use both passive and active attitude stablisation of their camera. The simple gravity based picavet kite rig probably will work reasonably well. I made the picavet rig with laser cut 3mm acrylic and did the usual heat bending to get the right shape. I have not really tested this rig with the camera and that is what I will be doing soon.
Here is a brillant video from a gimbal stablised kite that one kite enthusiast has recorded. Note that this enthusiast uses a gimbal as well as the picavet rig to get such rock steady camera footage from his kite. Brilliant work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm3E3YWW4lc
