Report Your Over Water Failure

[the.ronin]

I'm reading a lot of posts about people losing control of their drone when flying over water in some cases even losing their drone after crashing in the water. This is of particular importance to me since I plan to fly over ocean water often and would like to close somewhat low level passes on my friends surfing.

If this has happened to you, would you mind describing the flight situation and how you were able to recover if at all? In particular:

1) Flight mode and drone attitude during the failure.
2) Altitude above the water and characteristics of the water (choppy ocean, smooth lake, running river etc.).
3) Immediate weather environment (clear, foggy, drizzly, snowing, windy, calm, etc.)
4) Description of the equipment failure itself.

Thanks and hopefully others can find this helpful as well.

 

[Meta4]

If this has happened to you, would you mind describing the flight situation and how you were able to recover if at all?

Don't worry about it.
If you are going to be flying close to the water's surface just turn the downward facing sensors off.

 

[run2jeepn]

The manual says not to fly over Transparent surfaces.. Never thought about turning the downward facing sensors off. What disadvantages come with turning them off?

 

[Meta4]

The manual says not to fly over Transparent surfaces.. Never thought about turning the downward facing sensors off. What disadvantages come with turning them off?

For most open water flying, not much.
But if want to fly close to teh water and there was any chance of confusing the VPS with a moving water surface or with it reading through clear water to a shallow botton, those issues are eliminated by disabling the downward facing sensors.
Then you are flying just as you do high in the air.

 

[Porky]

I fly over water 99% of the time with no problems, the only thing I have done is found another landing site just in case I run into any difficulties.

Make sure the home point has been activated plus keep a close eye on the battery usage, very important for some reason I fill much safer flying over water but that’s just me, when I first tried it I was very nervous but now I don’t think anything of it, it’s just like flying over land, no difference

 

[kaitokid535]

Happened to me yesterday,

I was flying my drone and set it to Sport mode thinking that nothing bad will happen, when suddenly I accelerated my drone towards me and suddenly it flips over and goes in to the water (5 ~ 10m altitude above water).

Luckily it crashed just near my friend and was able to recover it after some few seconds from crash, when the drone was handed over to me I immediately removed the battery and I rinsed it with mineral water to remove the salt water, then I dry it using my bath towel find a container put the drone and fill it with rice.

When I got home, I use a hair blower (with cool setting) to dry off the inside components but the blower isn't enough so luckily there's a powerful vacuum hanging around, and blow off inside the drone for 30 mins to make sure the components inside is being dried.

I tried to turn it on just to check if it survived and miraculously and it turned on but there were battery and sensor errors.

I thought all hope was lost, so I look for silica gel and found some inside the shoe boxes and store my drone inside the hard case with silica gels on it, and leave it overnight.

The next day, another miracle happened and the sensor errors are now gone and I tried to fly it without problems.

But I am not yet satisfied with the recovery as I haven't tested all of its features yet (eg: Active Track, Quick Shots, etc.), I still have to do some testing this weekend.

Will let you know of my further progress.


From my analysis of what happened is that when you set it to sport mode the drone will fly fast and thus the tilt/angle of the drone will change and most probably a strong wind hit the drone causing it to flip.

 

[Meta4]

From my analysis of what happened is that when you set it to sport mode the drone will fly fast and thus the tilt/angle of the drone will change and most probably a strong wind hit the drone causing it to flip.

Did you have any flight data from the incident?
It might be interesting to see what it shows.
Flipping seems likely - it's not something we see happening to others.

 

[kaitokid535]

Did you have any flight data from the incident?
It might be interesting to see what it shows.
Flipping seems likely - it's not something we see happening to others.

sure. here it is

 

[sar104]

sure. here it is

That's not the log of a flight - just a power up at 7:24 on March 13.

 

[Scubes3]

Two things. Get the DJI Care program so you can get up to two replacement drones in the year -- even for water damage (drowning); and two, put some floats on it in case it does take a dive. You need to recover the drone to be able to send it back to DJI for replacement. I picked up my floats on eBay for under $15 and they don't affect flying at all. Good investment!

 

[Meta4]

I picked up my floats on eBay for under $15 and they don't affect flying at all.

Not at all? That's remarkable.

 

[Drbobk]

Two things. Get the DJI Care program so you can get up to two replacement drones in the year -- even for water damage (drowning); and two, put some floats on it in case it does take a dive. You need to recover the drone to be able to send it back to DJI for replacement. I picked up my floats on eBay for under $15 and they don't affect flying at all. Good investment!

What are you flying and what floats did you get?

 

[Sreid55]

Not a mavic but a phantom, last week : Took off from a parking lot with standing water — not much but enough to make the surface smooth and reflective. RTH went fine until it was about 20’ above the surface above the takeoff point, then it took off sideways. Recovered manually.
I’m assuming the optical flow got confused by reflections in the precision landing routine. I.e., it was seeing the clouds instead of the ground.

 

[CanadaDrone]

The drone uses a barometer for altitude, not the downward VPS - there is no need to ever turn them off for normal P-mode flying. I fly low over water all the time with zero issues - it's no different than flying over land in that regard.

 

[tcope]

The drone uses a barometer for altitude, not the downward VPS - there is no need to ever turn them off for normal P-mode flying. I fly low over water all the time with zero issues - it's no different than flying over land in that regard.

Correct. Thank you. VPS does not override other sensors. Most are confused as a throwback to pre P4 days.

 

[Porky]

The drone uses a barometer for altitude, not the downward VPS - there is no need to ever turn them off for normal P-mode flying. I fly low over water all the time with zero issues - it's no different than flying over land in that regard.

Couldn’t agree with you more on your post, I fly over water all the time in P mode. I also fly close to the water top, again with no problems.

 

[CanadaDrone]

Correct. Thank you. VPS does not override other sensors. Most are confused as a throwback to pre P4 days.

Indeed, lots of misinformation in this thread or at least misinterpretation of the features.

 

[Mtn. Man]

I just lost my drone today over a river. It was because of low hanging branches, but I did notice my aircraft not hovering like it should. I also noticed that it would loose and gain altitude with no input when I tried to hover over the river.

 

[Mtn. Man]

Two things. Get the DJI Care program so you can get up to two replacement drones in the year -- even for water damage (drowning); and two, put some floats on it in case it does take a dive. You need to recover the drone to be able to send it back to DJI for replacement. I picked up my floats on eBay for under $15 and they don't affect flying at all. Good investment!

Floats are a 100% great investment.... I'm too late to notice that...

 

[the.ronin]

I was flying my drone and set it to Sport mode thinking that nothing bad will happen, when suddenly I accelerated my drone towards me and suddenly it flips over and goes in to the water (5 ~ 10m altitude above water).

I'm curious about this. I thought S mode disabled all sensors, so what could have caused it to actually flip and lose control?