Nose gear point of view
Usually, flying videos are taken from cameras mounted in the cockpit with the pilots or mounted on the nose. Gadling featured a video taken with a camera that was mounted on the nose gear of a 747-200, which is definitely worth watching.
AKA Keeper of Maps, I'm a geocacher who lives in Ottawa, Canada.
I find it odd how the nose gear comes down so long before the mains. I wonder if it is some sort of aerodynamic counter to the flaps?
I was wondering about that and all I could come up with is that maybe the pilot manually lowered the nose gear only so that he could get some good footage. I don’t recall seeing 747s flying around with just the nose gear down when setting up for landings.
I had a similar response as you did – spectacular. I wonder if Ballekla was referring to the advance deployment of the nose gear when he noted “Oh and the phrase “non-standard” cropped up in the landing brief”. I also hope that he used genuine 3M duct tape to attach the non-standard camera.
According to http://www.meriweather.com/747/center/gears.html, the nose gear and main gear can indeed be lowered independently.