Hello everyone,

I posted my initial plan to build a Nauticam trim sled with aluminum profiles a while ago. In August/September I was on the Azores to test the final setup. It was heavily positive, but I could fix it during the first check dive. The 6inch monitor is honestly the best thing. You can see everything from every angle. During the shark dives it was great to have one eye on the monitor and the other one on the sharks.

The aluminum profiles worked great. We had some rough sea and the tray protected the housing from too hard bounces. I swapped the nuts to 3d printed ones, because they were rusting. Also the float situation is not great. I need to design and print an holder for the two buoyancy arms on each side. After some of you guys said that I should balance the floats, I put some of them below, but the bigger part on top. The weights on the sled were also a DIY quick and dirty project. This one needs proper lead weights with a proper screw, but the trim worked underwater.

All in all it is a great setup, it is still a little bit positive, but nothing a few lead weights couldn't fix ;) The Keldan wireless remote is a funny gimmick and keeps me radius small, so I don't have to reach that far to change the light output.
The dives in the Azores were absolutely great and almost 4TB of data wait to be edited haha

If you have any questions just write me a :)

Edited yesterday at 11:19 AM1 day by danka94

Thanks for the update and nice rig! Post a few more photos if you can.

Maybe the double buoyancy arms are overkill. The topic of trim has been coming up a lot lately. Ideally, you want to concentrate the buoyancy around the camera body while making the lights neutral at the same time. The goal is to avoid having the upward lift out on the arms as much as possible; that way, when you move the arms, you don't shift the overall balance—or at least, you minimize the effect. As Chris mentioned, the real issue is the torque on your wrists when you're tilting up or down. You end up fighting that force with your wrists, which isn't ideal for smooth video.

P.S.

Would you mind if I merge this post with your original thread where you first shared the photos of your setup?

7 hours ago, danka94 said:

The dives in the Azores were absolutely great and almost 4TB of data wait to be edited haha

I’m really interested in your Azores experience. I’ve been thinking about it for a family vacation with some diving on the side. Would you mind opening a thread? 🤩