A Chilly flight at -15F and 20mph wind

[akdrone]

We headed out of Fairbanks up the Eliot Hwy to the Dempster Hwy, just east of the Yukon River. We had seen some fantastic spruce trees encased in snow and ice and wanted to film them. It was blowing 20mph and the temp was roughly -20F. We fly from inside our truck so we try to point it in the direction we are mostly going to fly but I'm always amazed at how good of a connection we maintain even when our drones are in back of the truck. In any case, there will be more video to come but here is a snippet when a thin layer of clouds began to blow over us for a few minutes and I went up through the clouds to get a peek. I tried to stay pretty much over our truck in the event the drone would ice up but there was no problem. As usual my buddy was on a Mav Air 2s and I was using my FPV. My Mav 3 is in transit... Humorously DJI rates the FPV to fly and some interesting temp well above 0F but it is clearly capable of flying in much, much colder temps.

 

[TheParaPilot]

I'll remember where you are when I'm moaning about it being -2 here lol. Looks like a beautiful location, great footage, do you find a quicker depletion of battery life due to the colder conditions? also when you know you're going to fly in that kind of temp do you acclimatise the drone / controller to the outside temp prior to a flight?

 

[akdrone]

The batteries definitely do not last as long but we're still getting something like 10min in these temps. We don't acclimate the drone at all. We are sitting inside the car and travel from one spot to the next, tossing the drone and gear in the backseat (put away in its' case, actually) while we go to the next spot (typically a half hour drive but that varies) and then we simply get out, grab the gear and get everything connected while we are in the car. The drone goes outside, set on the snow/ice and boom. We're off. I will start giving it a little minute of hovering and checking things out. That's a great idea. If it went down even 300feet from where we are flying, in many places that could be as good as 300 miles. I could not physically get through the snow and brush to retrieve a drone even a football field away. I like going up above clouds which I know is dicey and probably has the greatest chance of a problem. We've landed with some pretty frosty props. One thing I note is that I have gotten (a few times now) a notice along the lines of "battery power insufficient" or something like that. It might show 3min of battery life left but I get that notice. I attribute that to the cold but am not sure. At that point I make a bee line to the road instead of coming directly back to the car. I have 6 batteries and typically land with 2-3min left, then after it warms up, we start charging them via the cigarette lighter charger. It results in being able to fly all day. Our range is probably limited by flying from within the car but at -20F and a 20mph wind...well....

 

[sarimento1]

great stuff!
would be super to see fly over the yukon river bridge and islands!
even better...some night auroras!!
keep flying and posting!

 

[akdrone]

We did fly over the bridge and got some good video. I won't be able to work on it for a while and am backlogged with two other videos, one that includes the AK Railroad running beneath me and another that has a showing of 11 moose in a group...but yeah, we got the frozen Yukon albeit just a few minutes of it.