Yes, I have some ideas for you, having played around with two action cameras for a couple of years now. I've been meaning to put up a sub-gallery of this stuff, but haven't gotten around to it yet. In the meantime, here are some suggestions and thoughts, followed by some pics.
1) PanaVise:
This is a superb suction cup mount. It's
not the kind of suction cup you get free with a Garmin, for your car's windshield, that drops onto your dash, on a whim. Instead, it has a push button -- to evacuate air, or make it stick better, or something -- followed by a flip-over lever, to keep it that way.
I've had this mounted for
weeks at a time (and removed only when I wanted to remove it) on the fairing of the XCT. I place it up near the windshield, just to the left or right of the crease running down the fairing center; that area is very flat. Of course, I make sure the cup and the fairing are first wiped with a micro-fiber cloth with some alcohol on it. And I use nylon-covered cable tethers, just for yuks (but they've never got any real use).
You can see the details at the manufacturer's page
https://www.panavise.com/index.html?pageID=1&page=full&--eqskudatarq=250 or at the Amazon page
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N9PPOAY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00 . There are similar products, but the PanaVise is the one I've used and highly recommend.
I used the PanaVise on the windshield of a Burgman 650 last month, to record the first two on-your-own 20-minute sessions at a track day. The sub-gallery of that day is
Non-Sportbike Track Day, Palmer, MA, 08-22-2016 . The pic below is from that, and these two video links are also in there:
1st session using PanaVise and GoPro on Burgman:
https://vimeo.com/179989063
2nd session using PanaVise and GoPro on Burgman:
https://vimeo.com/180043629
2) Cardellini clamp and Manfrotto ball:
I used this setup for many videos using my first action cam, a Liquid Image Ego 727, and that's the next pic below. You may gag on the price of this combination, but we're talking absolute professional quality manufacturing and clamping action. The jaws have a rubber surface, and the clamp just stays put. The ball adjusts all sorts of ways, has coarse and fine adjustments, and it, too, just stays put. No tethers here.
I bought this combination some years back from Film Tools, and you can see it here:
Cardellini 494 - The Mini Cardellini Camera & Monitor Mount - Filmtools . (It's possible that you can piece this together elsewhere and save some money, of course, if you get the right parts.)
The next pic is one of the few places where you can mount it on an XCT. The crashbar gives an interesting low-level view, and includes some of the front wheel. I moved away from this setup when I got my GoPro, because I started using (and then backed off a bit) a wider field of view, which would have included too much of the wheel and fender. Still, this is a real machined work of functional art, those two pieces.
This is one of the videos using this system on the crashbar, with the Ego 727 on the XCT, on a public road in Massachusetts:
https://vimeo.com/72389999
3) This spring, I fabbed up a homemade system, for mounting behind the Madstad on my XCT. It uses some hardware-store brackets and some pieces made for camera mounting, camera-support extensions, and that sort of thing. These extension pieces are available from several suppliers, and are common in the camera-mount world. Go on Amazon, use the "Camera & Photo" drop-down choice in the search field, and enter something like
15mm rod extension and you'll see some of this stuff.
With much experimentation, and trial and error, I came up with some parts that suited what I was trying to accomplish. Specifically, I wanted to build a mounting system that didn't require any permanent alteration of the XCT -- no cutting or drilling, etc. -- and that allowed the camera to be easily and quickly removed. And this accomplished that. There are two pieces -- the threaded parts at the ends of the main rod -- that required that I do some tap work (they're, surprisingly, solid aluminum, not hollow); also, I painted the right-angle brackets black (and you can see that I'm not a very good painter), but that's it for custom work. I also added some extra washers underneath the windshield brackets in the forward side, to compensate for the thickness of the right-angle brackets, and replaced the button-head bolts with hex-surround-head bolts (because I kept butchering the button heads).
This system works very well, and is adjustable in gobs of ways using only lever tighteners. And the camera (and short attached rod underneath it) can be completely removed by loosening a single lever (and if that lever happens to loosen in use, the camera-and-rod just slides down, and stays in place). Also, the videos don't get much of the bike at all. I used this a few times, and this is probably going to be my preferred XCT mount. Here's a video of a track day back in May, using this system:
Track session, homemade mount and GoPro, on XCT:
https://vimeo.com/168109961
But note:
- This was at New Hampshire speedway, which is a very bumpy track.
- This was using an earlier version of my system, with less-beefy right-angle brackets; I've since replaced those with wider brackets, which are more resistant to vibration.
Some random thoughts:
- The PanaVise works extremely well, as you can see in the Burgman videos. But note that these were taken at Palmer motorsports in MA, and that's a very smooth track. And the Big Burger is a smoother bike than the XCT (on smooth roads or tracks, that is -- the XCT has an inch more suspension travel).
- When the XCT's 106 is on the boil, you're going to get vibration -- that's the nature of a big V-Twinkie.
- You can minimize vibration with a helmet mount, because your body will act as the ultimate shock absorber, and soak that stuff up. OTOH, as a personal preference I like bike mounts, because they show lean angles, no head checks, bike mounts are easy to line up and stay lined up, and so forth. But that's me. I've never tried a helmet mount, and I don't think I will.
- Keeping a camera's view clean is easier when it's behind a windshield, because you're going to clean the windshield anyway, and you don't have to be as careful (although I still really like the PanaVise, out in front). In the Loudon (NH) video, the GoPro's behind a light gray tinted Madstad. That was just for looks, ordering it that way, because I almost never look through it. If I had to do it again, I'd get a clear windshield for that reason. In fact, I just ordered a windshield for my new-to-me Burgman, and the order is for a clear one.
I hope this gives you some ideas.
Here are the pics: