Hello folks, thought I'd share an experience with you. At home we have a pool with a salt water system. When phones or electronics get into the pool, we immerse in burning alcohol to remove the water, agitate for a while, allow to dry out and they generally work OK. One phone had funny colours in part of the screen afterwards. Water dissolves in alcohol and the alcohol gets right inside the device to remove the water. It's also more volatile than water so dries out faster. Putting your device in rice may dry the outside but on the inside ... it's there causing damage until it dries out. If there is salt in the water, is seriously damaging. We keep a closed plastic container of alcohol handy near the pool just in case...
So I decided to try hand launch and retrieve from a yacht while on holiday in Greece, tied up at the jetty to begin with before trying under sail. All went fine and I had the retrieved drone in my left hand and controller in my right. When I switched off the propellors, my hand was too far forward of the CofG and - gasp - it twisted down from my hand and fell behind the boat into the water as the propellor lift disappeared. Sank to the bottom 2m down. I jumped in and retrieved it back to the boat and removed the battery.
The strongest alcohol we had on board was 2 bottles of very nice gin. Plastic food container, Mavic in, filled it with gin then went hunting. Local store had some pure alcohol so I replaced the gin (no didn't try to drink it) with the pure alcohol. After agitating the container for quite a while, took the Mavic out and let it dry out. Ignored all the mickey-taking from my wife who was also irritated that the gin had all gone.
Now I wasn't dumb enough to stick another battery on it and try to fly it. I took it back to the UK where there is a place near London that does Mavic repairs. Sent it to them, it cost me £100 (about $135) to fix it; much cheaper than a new one. But it flies fine and everything works.
Hope this is useful to someone - but even better to not drop it in the sea to begin with.
Cheers, Steve.
So I decided to try hand launch and retrieve from a yacht while on holiday in Greece, tied up at the jetty to begin with before trying under sail. All went fine and I had the retrieved drone in my left hand and controller in my right. When I switched off the propellors, my hand was too far forward of the CofG and - gasp - it twisted down from my hand and fell behind the boat into the water as the propellor lift disappeared. Sank to the bottom 2m down. I jumped in and retrieved it back to the boat and removed the battery.
The strongest alcohol we had on board was 2 bottles of very nice gin. Plastic food container, Mavic in, filled it with gin then went hunting. Local store had some pure alcohol so I replaced the gin (no didn't try to drink it) with the pure alcohol. After agitating the container for quite a while, took the Mavic out and let it dry out. Ignored all the mickey-taking from my wife who was also irritated that the gin had all gone.
Now I wasn't dumb enough to stick another battery on it and try to fly it. I took it back to the UK where there is a place near London that does Mavic repairs. Sent it to them, it cost me £100 (about $135) to fix it; much cheaper than a new one. But it flies fine and everything works.
Hope this is useful to someone - but even better to not drop it in the sea to begin with.
Cheers, Steve.
