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Too Hot to Fly... :(

jaysrmc

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Temps are near 110 now in Phoenix.. After a 10 min flight my MP was too hot to even pick up with bare hands. Had to use motorcycle gloves.

Kinda sucks but expected this. Last year I remember that during July, August and early September I had to fly early morning or after 6pm.. Now I miss the winters.. I guess it is a good excuse to head up north for a day, maybe I will hit the Indian Reservation side of the Grand Canyon. I called and they said I could fly from their land as long as I check in with them first and not disturb the wild life meaning, flying close to them or chasing them. They were actually really cool about it and requested a copy of any video I take. There is a lot of small plane and Helicopter activity there but if I stay low and fly safe I should be fine.
 
Not only is the air hotter, and the drone hotter at the start of the flight, but hot air is THINNER and gives you less LIFT, so the motors have to work harder to support the craft, thus causing even more heat. Airports get shut down because of heat/thin air.
 
Do you have any idea of what your Mavic temperatures were? I would use a temp gun to make sure the battery is not getting over 120° - 130°. Does your device ever freeze up when it gets that hot?

Wasnt it last year that the aircraft tires were melting into the tarmac in Phoenix? Now that's hot.
 
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Do you have any idea of what your Mavic temperatures were? I would use a temp gun to make sure the battery is not getting over 120° - 130°. Does your device ever freeze up when it gets that hot?

Wasnt it last year that the aircraft tires were melting into the tarmac in Phoenix? Now that's hot.

I am unsure of the temp of the MP. If I were to guess, I would say that the temps of the MP and battery were around the 120 mark. I powered it off and put it in front of the ac vent of the car for a few minutes before I could touch it with my bare hands. Never had it freeze up, the video did start to become unresponsive after a few minutes of flight but the video that was recorded was fine.

It was a few years ago where they had an incident with tires becoming unstable, I think melting was an overstatement by the media. I do know they will shut it down at 120 degrees because planes have a hard time taking off .

** Edit checked air data the battery temp was 139.8f.***

***Edit 2. My preflight took about 3 minutes to get everything setup and checked by the time I took flight air data shows that the temp of the battery was 129.4f. ****


The flight was at 9am so I think I will have to store it for the summer unless I go up north.
 
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Not only is the air hotter, and the drone hotter at the start of the flight, but hot air is THINNER and gives you less LIFT, so the motors have to work harder to support the craft, thus causing even more heat. Airports get shut down because of heat/thin air.

Yes I am aware of this too as I have seen airports in phoenix shut down do to the heat and planes having a hard time taking off. I do know that the motors were working over time because the GO 4 app estimated with a full battery I only had 20 minutes of flying, when I usually see 25-29 minutes of flight time for the battery. Just checked Air Data my battery temp was 139.8f.
 
I was flying mine at night about 3 weeks ago and after I landed i just for the hell of it I decided to check the batt temp. 156f degrees!! At night! Here in Vegas when the temps get up at McCarran the planes land and take off from runway 7 instead of the usual 25. It has a slight downgrade. After dark they usually turn the airport back around and resume normal runway 25 ops
 
It's always cool to hear that people have a modest view towards drones. I live in the UK where the default answer is generally no. So I've adopted an 'ask for forgiveness' approach.... [emoji38]

I do this a lot too but when on the Native American Reservations, I always ask first because they can pretty much do whatever they want there. Including arrest or confiscating the device. I have run into problems there so I always keep the name and phone number of the person I spoke with as much details as I can get.
 
Battery damage can occur due to excessive heat. Watch for battery swelling and a poor fit.
 
Temps are near 110 now in Phoenix.. After a 10 min flight my MP was too hot to even pick up with bare hands. Had to use motorcycle gloves.

Kinda sucks but expected this. Last year I remember that during July, August and early September I had to fly early morning or after 6pm.. Now I miss the winters.. I guess it is a good excuse to head up north for a day, maybe I will hit the Indian Reservation side of the Grand Canyon. I called and they said I could fly from their land as long as I check in with them first and not disturb the wild life meaning, flying close to them or chasing them. They were actually really cool about it and requested a copy of any video I take. There is a lot of small plane and Helicopter activity there but if I stay low and fly safe I should be fine.
I'm up here in Bullhead City/Laughlin and it's, unfortunately, usually hotter than Phoenix. Guess I too won't be flying much except in the early AM. I am out with my dog at 5AM and it's usually nice at that time--today was like 81F and I practically needed a jacket. In another month it will be close to 100F at 5AM so....

The last time I tried flying in the middle of the day it was "only" 106F and the sun beating down on my iPad mini 4 caused it to nearly shut down. Thankfully my MP did fine, but I don't think I'd want to push it much further.



Mike
 
...The last time I tried flying in the middle of the day it was "only" 106F and the sun beating down on my iPad mini 4 caused it to nearly shut down. Thankfully my MP did fine, but I don't think I'd want to push it much further...
From the DJI battery safety guidelines:
upload_2018-6-29_8-49-29.png
So, DJI does not recommend flying in temps above 104F. Your battery probably will not catch fire or explode but it can surely suffer damage.
 
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I dread every summer here in Vegas knowing I can’t fly as much but the good side is I have plenty of time to catch up on post editing. Fly safe my friends.
 
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The flight was at 9am

I live in Bullhead City and we usually (not always) are a little warmer than Phoenix. We go flying early morning 6:00 am and the temp is about 85 - 90. We fly two - three batteries and go look for another place to fly the next time. As I remember the DJI recommended operating temperature was 32 F to 104 F. Our winter temp rarely gets below 40 so the LOW is never an issue. After a flight the AC or battery is never too hot to handle.

I have a temp gun and I will check the battery and AC temps after each flight. When the daytime temps get 115+ during the day at night it is still 110+ until after dark so evening flying is not an option.

Me personally I will not fly if the temp is near 100 at takeoff.
 
Ok heres one for everyone... partly joking and partly not.

What if you hot weather dwellers put your aircraft into a very cool room before you fly? I used to put Phantoms in the fridge for 10-15 minutes before an IMU calibration which is called a "cold calibration" when the regular calibration didnt work. I think it takes around 2-3 minutes for the Mavic to reach maximum operating temperature, longer than that to exceed it. If you start out at a lower temperature, you might be able to get at least a few minutes of flight time before you're on dangerous ground.

@sar104 any idea if this sounds feasible?
 
Ok heres one for everyone... partly joking and partly not.

What if you hot weather dwellers put your aircraft into a very cool room before you fly? I used to put Phantoms in the fridge for 10-15 minutes before an IMU calibration which is called a "cold calibration" when the regular calibration didnt work. I think it takes around 2-3 minutes for the Mavic to reach maximum operating temperature, longer than that to exceed it. If you start out at a lower temperature, you might be able to get at least a few minutes of flight time before you're on dangerous ground.

@sar104 any idea if this sounds feasible?

If it starts cold then it will take longer to warm up. The problem with chilling the aircraft is that when you then put it into much warmer air, if its temperature is below the dew point of that warmer air, you will get water vapor condensing on and in the aircraft. A better approach might be to cool just the batteries, which are likely the component most sensitive to high temperatures.
 
It's funny but living in the carribbean, the sun feels like it's inches away but it's not nearly that hot here. No problems yet flying all summer long. With the phantom 2 after a year the batteries were shot, so far these Mavic batteries are still fine. And I dont have air conditioning at home so they are just always hot, probably never been below 70* except for one flight in Canada at -13c on vacation. Cut that flight short because I thought I was going to freeze to death or lose fingers.
 
It's funny but living in the carribbean, the sun feels like it's inches away but it's not nearly that hot here. No problems yet flying all summer long. With the phantom 2 after a year the batteries were shot, so far these Mavic batteries are still fine. And I dont have air conditioning at home so they are just always hot, probably never been below 70* except for one flight in Canada at -13c on vacation. Cut that flight short because I thought I was going to freeze to death or lose fingers.

I remember living in Cuba as a child. No AC but the breeze felt so wonderful that I didn't have a problem sleeping.
 
If it starts cold then it will take longer to warm up. The problem with chilling the aircraft is that when you then put it into much warmer air, if its temperature is below the dew point of that warmer air, you will get water vapor condensing on and in the aircraft. A better approach might be to cool just the batteries, which are likely the component most sensitive to high temperatures.

Thumbswayup

DJI claims that the operating temperature range of the Mavic is 32° to 104° F (0° to 40° C). If we were to eliminate the drone from the pre-cooling process to avoid the possibility of condensation, and say cool the battery to 40°f, I wonder how long the battery will take to get up to the limit of it's operating range (104°f) in extreme (over 100°f) conditions under load?

I have flown on 95°f days, and the internals and motors were fine, but the battery was on the higher range of it's scale.
 
If you think the pro batteries get hot in summer, be sure to keep an eye on the Mavic Air batteries, they run a good 5-10degrees warmer. Even in an Aussie winter I'm able to run them up to 66celcius after a 9min run in sports mode. The spark and the pro got into the low 50s in a similar flight.

In summer I achieved 72celcius, I'm not convinced these batteries are going to last 200-300cycles at this rate.
 
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It's always cool to hear that people have a modest view towards drones. I live in the UK where the default answer is generally no. So I've adopted an 'ask for forgiveness' approach.... [emoji38]

Lol. Just make sure you get those shots.
 
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