This paper describes the techniques and physical parameters used to produce
stable centimetric water drops in microgravity, and to study single cavitation
bubbles inside such drops (Parabolic Flight Campaigns, European Space Agency
ESA). While the main scientific results have been presented in a previous
paper, we shall herein provide the necessary technical background, with
potential applications to other experiments. First, we present an original
method to produce and capture large stable drops in microgravity. This
technique succeeded in generating quasi-spherical water drops with volumes up
to 8 ml, despite the residual g-jitter. We find that the equilibrium of the
drops is essentially dictated by the ratio between the drop volume and the
contact surface used to capture the drop, and formulate a simple stability
criterion. In a second part, we present a setup for creating and studying
single cavitation bubbles inside those drops. In addition, we analyze the
influence of the bubble size and position on the drop behaviour after collapse,
i.e. jets and surface perturbations