Purpose <p>During the flight of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), unwanted vibrations are produced. These vibrations are transmitted to onboard equipment such as photograph and video cameras. Different stabilization methods have been proposed to mitigate image degradation caused by vibrations during flight. Mechanical stabilization is the first choice to avoid motion blur effects. The purpose of this work was to perform an experimental study of the vibrations experienced during the flight of an RPA to establish a vibration isolation methodology based on passive mechanical stabilization.</p> Methods <p>In this study, field vibration testing and image capture during hover flight of an RPA were conducted. Vibrations were characterized in the frequency domain and image quality deterioration was quantified using the focus Brenner function. Laboratory vibration characterization of different passive mechanical isolation systems using mechanical isolators was conducted. For this purpose, a test bench was designed with a mechanical shaker.</p> Results <p>Results show that the implementation of a correctly selected passive mechanical isolation system in an RPA can reduce the RMS value of the vibrations transmitted to an onboard camera by up to 95%. Consequently, the image quality was significantly improved when implementing a passive mechanical isolation system.</p> Conclusion <p>The proposed methodology has been applied to the camera on board an RPA through the implementation of a specially designed and selected passive mechanical isolation system. Correct selection of the passive mechanical isolation system is necessary and essential to achieve vibration isolation.</p>