Flying over water

[Darmie]

Here you go

Wow, even mentions disable when over water. Interesting.

 

[Gerry65]

Wow, even mentions disable when over water. Interesting.

Wo and Yo! I fly almost exclusively over water but never below 10 feet so I thought I was OK with all sensors operating. I'm glad I saw this thread.

 

[Drone Master]

Wo and Yo! I fly almost exclusively over water but never below 10 feet so I thought I was OK with all sensors operating. I'm glad I saw this thread.

Your ok as long as you maintain that 10 ft height. If you want to get lower such as those nice water surface shots, then for sure disable VPS.

 

[Fidel Mavic]

Hi guys,
I know this topic has been bandied around a little, but I am out camping near a lake, and I want to report my experience. This morning I rose at sunrise to fly and record, and the water was smooth and flat with some dead trees dotted around - the making of a great scene. I took off (to over 10 metres to get home point) with everything normal and then descended to about 3 feet before venturing to the lakes edge. The MP went fine for a few feet but then rose abruptly by itself as if had sensed something under it.
Is this a case of the water causing confusion to the sensors? Would you recommend disabling OA whist doing this kind of filming?

I fly 90% of the time over water but never ,I mean never ,lower than 90 feet ,so far so good

 

[Spanishcop]

I fly over water quite often.... But I fly low. All this time I've been flying with all sensors on.......HOW IN THE WORLD I didn't go in the water I have no clue. I was not aware at first about all these issues with flying over water.

Of course now I disable the sensors to be on safe side but I have a couple videos low water flight and one with waterfalls and my goodness... I feel very lucky now KNOWING WHAT I KNOW that I still have my MP.

All my flights were on.0500 and I just recently rolled back to.0400 as I wanted to try Litchi and other software out and not taking chances in new firmware. So far.0400 still works good.

I just keep thinking I could have been one of those people that went into the water when sensors were still on. YIKES!!!!

Mike

 

[Nickalf.....]

On Saturday, we experienced similar problems when towing a line over trees.. The downward facing sensors 'saw' the thread and told the Mavic to 'fly away' from it but, of course, the line followed and chaos - we had no idea why the 2 Mavics were heading for each other, got tangled in the twine and came down.. Had we have turned off the sensors, all would have been fine.

 

[rocdok]

i practiced today over grass with vps off. The speed goes up as expected and pulling down on left stick gives a very rapid descent to the grass. I boinced a few times lightly semi on purpose. There is a bit of drift noted mostly for up and down. I flew inches from the grass quickly and had to be ready to 'up' the left stick as the forward thrust 'attitude' tends to push the mavic down a bit. I have visions of catching a foot in the water, but have experienced autoland in the past over land when i didnt mean to ( a second or two too long on the left down stick) but for me it reversed if I immediately up sticked. I've also had a lot of false alarms over water so want to turn vos off in theory. Also, I noted i still got an alarm for obstacle avoidance even when turned off- this went away when i turned off radar. This all said, I wondered what effect the landing assistance button has when turned off all by itself? if I turn off obstacle avoidance, there are two settings that comletely disappear from the advance setting list, one of which is the landing assistance. Does the assistance play a role with the autolanding by mistake into water when left stick down too long? i ran out of power and didnt test.

 

[Plawa]

My experience with flying over water while on a boat - set "Loss of signal" to hover, don't go under 40% battery, keep an eye on your distance from (what the drone thinks is) your original homepoint, or remember to periodically reset your HP.. because when this happens you better remember to flip to sport mode to regain control and land quickly on a boat that is everything but stationary (I may have lost a little bit of weight right there...)

 

[PaoloOne]

As far as I understood for avoiding problems when flying over water it should be enough to switch the Landing Protection off so not necessary to switch off the whole downward sensors, right?

 

[mark_t]

As far as I understood for avoiding problems when flying over water it should be enough to switch the Landing Protection off so not necessary to switch off the whole downward sensors, right?

Wrong.

The VPS system can be unreliable when over water and if it is available the Mavic will use it for altitude as barometric pressure and GPS are not particularly accurate at low levels.

 

[PaoloOne]

Wrong.

The VPS system can be unreliable when over water and if it is available the Mavic will use it for altitude as barometric pressure and GPS are not particularly accurate at low levels.

I see your point and makes sense but at least with LPS off if it suddenly decides to land you still can cancel the landing with a throttle up as here said.

 

[rocdok]

hey, i've been out again testing. If i turn just the landing protection and/or the other one off(forget the name) but leave overall vps on , it still won't let me fly below the few feet high without trying to auto-land. Interestingly, someone said earlier they could not cancel or that the 'new software' update wouldn't allow us to cancel. I've done multiple close drops slowly to the grass, and had the auto-land kick in and was able to reverse easily just with an up stick every time. So, I"m confused. Again, i find the stability without the vps terrible ( it flies perfectly with vps on so i don't think there are calibration issues) so I'm still not sure about low flying over water without vps. No easy answer. flying higher i can see no issues turning it off.

 

[JLane]

hey, i've been out again testing. If i turn just the landing protection and/or the other one off(forget the name) but leave overall vps on , it still won't let me fly below the few feet high without trying to auto-land. Interestingly, someone said earlier they could not cancel or that the 'new software' update wouldn't allow us to cancel. I've done multiple close drops slowly to the grass, and had the auto-land kick in and was able to reverse easily just with an up stick every time. So, I"m confused. Again, i find the stability without the vps terrible ( it flies perfectly with vps on so i don't think there are calibration issues) so I'm still not sure about low flying over water without vps. No easy answer. flying higher i can see no issues turning it off.

Are you 100% sure that you had Landing Protection off, and the Mavic still tried to auto-land when you held the throttle down? I fly with Landing Protection off pretty much all the time, and the Mavic flies as low to the ground as I want, and never initiates auto-landing.

Regarding the inability to abort the auto-landing, that was the case in firmwares .0500 and .0550, but was fixed in .0600 so we're now able to abort the auto-landing again using the throttle.

 

[rocdok]

Are you 100% sure that you had Landing Protection off, and the Mavic still tried to auto-land when you held the throttle down? I fly with Landing Protection off pretty much all the time, and the Mavic flies as low to the ground as I want, and never initiates auto-landing.

Regarding the inability to abort the auto-landing, that was the case in firmwares .0500 and .0550, but was fixed in .0600 so we're now able to abort the auto-landing again using the throttle.

thx. yep - in the advanced settings there are 4 choices (as you know)- the top is the enable vps, the second and third i cannot see in my app as i'm not hooked up so can't remember the names - but i turned off the third one by itself (leaving the vps button on) then the second one by itself (leaving the vps on) and each time if i held the left stick down too long (couple seconds) it will try and land. And, if i try to tap the stick to get lower to the ground with split second taps, i can get within inches, BUT, i find if the vps is off, the stability makes it sketch....
- i am old and stupid so I will try it once more later today to be certain...(+:

 

[rocdok]

u were right... keeping vps on with landing assistance off allows low stable flight wirhout risking an unexpected water landing. Thx...

 

[Capt. Jack]

Hello to everyone, I am a new Mavic owner and yes after 3 weeks very addicted to my Mavic. Things are progressing nicely, still a little nervous flying high and far. My question is, after reading 2 pages of post ,please advise what precautions should I take for flying just off the beach over the water? VPS "On" ? Landing protection? Some say Yes, others NO.....Hmmmm Thanks for any help. Sorry if this has been answered already, I do appreciate your expert advise.

 

[rocdok]

Hello to everyone, I am a new Mavic owner and yes after 3 weeks very addicted to my Mavic. Things are progressing nicely, still a little nervous flying high and far. My question is, after reading 2 pages of post ,please advise what precautions should I take for flying just off the beach over the water? VPS "On" ? Landing protection? Some say Yes, others NO.....Hmmmm Thanks for any help. Sorry if this has been answered already, I do appreciate your expert advise.

I'm doing vps on landing protection off- all water flying 3-4 meters off water

 

[theflyingtinman]

Are you saying that even with excellent GPS signal the VPS will also be used when flying low? I thought VPS was only used for indoor flying in OPTI mode or for precision landing.

GPS can only tell the Mavic its absolute position in 3D space, not how high above the surface it is flying. I suppose that a smart application could conceivably calculate ground clearance from GPS data if it also had access to VERY detail topolographic map data of the area in which you are flying (including all buildings and structures), but on its own, GPS can provide no information about ground clearance.