10 Things to Know before Flying Your Drone over Water!

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Ok I did a video about this, as I found many people losing their drone to the ocean or sea and I know the feeling, as my first SYMA drone, I had lost it to indian ocean.

Hope, you guys dont make those mistakes. Here are my 10 quick tips :

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So you had 10 quick tips.. but to know them I have to watch a not so quick video? What is quicker than posting them in text?

Pray for the day youtube videos and their ”quick tips” die...
 
All good tips. Let me add one more. Know where the No Fly Zones are! Some extend out to sea.
Last week a friend took off from a ship, flew into a NO FLY zone, Phantom turned tail and did a RTH - BUT the ship had moved, and his Phantom drowned.
Friend might have been OK if he had realized what was happening and (somehow) overrode the automatic RTH, and then manually had flown the Phantom to the ship's new position.
 
I think you can set RTH to your controller in go 4 but I haven't tried it yet . Should be better for boat use.
 
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I think you can set RTH to your controller in go 4 but I haven't tried it yet
You can if you're using a mobile device (or remote controller) that contains a GPS receiver. You need to manually update the home point each time you move though.
 
This was posted in the Phantom forum and you show a Mavic... so this is a little confusing.

I disagree with turning VPS off. This is a throw back to the P3. VPS does not control the altitude of the P4 and Mavic so even if the sensors were to become "confused" (they won't) that "confusion won't affect flight any longer. Also, VPS won't work above 30' on the P4 and Mavic anyway.

I also disagree with cell towers (though I've never seen cell towers over water before). They operate on the same frequency band but the radio signals are _completely_ different. The only way they would interfere is if the signal itself overpowered the Phantom or Mavic's own signal.

Personally, I thought the production value of the video was top notch. I lot of people may not notice how well this was done.
 
This is good, but flying from land then over water is much different than flying from a boat over water. From a boat, keep VPS off for take-off and landing (not from water issues) and update the RTH to the controller since the boat will likely be moving from wind, current or power.
 
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This was posted in the Phantom forum and you show a Mavic... so this is a little confusing.

I disagree with turning VPS off. This is a throw back to the P3. VPS does not control the altitude of the P4 and Mavic so even if the sensors were to become "confused" (they won't) that "confusion won't affect flight any longer. Also, VPS won't work above 30' on the P4 and Mavic anyway.

I also disagree with cell towers (though I've never seen cell towers over water before). They operate on the same frequency band but the radio signals are _completely_ different. The only way they would interfere is if the signal itself overpowered the Phantom or Mavic's own signal.

Personally, I thought the production value of the video was top notch. I lot of people may not notice how well this was done.
Turning the VPS off is probably a good idea.

This isn’t exclusively an issue of altitude measurement (I’m not sure your claim the P4 doesn’t use ultrasound for height ranging is correct in any case).

Even in the P4P vision and ultrasound are used to help the AC maintain position (within sensing range). So if you were hovering over the ocean and there was foam or some other discernible pattern feature moving below the AC it is conceivable this may be interpreted as movement over the ground.
 
Even in the P4P vision and ultrasound are used to help the AC maintain position (within sensing range). So if you were hovering over the ocean and there was foam or some other discernible pattern feature moving below the AC it is conceivable this may be interpreted as movement over the ground.
Other then the P3, ultrasonics don't adjust altitude in normal flight mode (I should have a video up this weekend on this). VPS does not over-ride a good GPS lock. That is, as long as there is a good GPS signal, VPS won't change the Phantoms position (during flight).

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I think you can set RTH to your controller in go 4 but I haven't tried it yet . Should be better for boat use.

Good idea but !!! Won't work if your tablet doesn't have GPS (i.e. wifi only). I use an iPad with Wifi only so that feature doesn't work.

One option would be to set RTH to hover vs return to home. Simply take control and bring it back.
 
I thought this was a well done video with excellent tips. As for having the tips written down? Write them down as you view the video. Pretty simple.

Thanks, and I'm sure your video will be a huge help to a lot of people.

Bud


Ok I did a video about this, as I found many people losing their drone to the ocean or sea and I know the feeling, as my first SYMA drone, I had lost it to Indian ocean.

Hope, you guys dont make those mistakes. Here are my 10 quick tips :

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
Ok I did a video about this, as I found many people losing their drone to the ocean or sea and I know the feeling, as my first SYMA drone, I had lost it to indian ocean.

Hope, you guys dont make those mistakes. Here are my 10 quick tips :

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Can't understand a word he said
 
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I too thought it was very well done. He also provided a title screen/box for each tip, so you can quickly skim through and recognize the blue framed box to go if you want to revisit a particular one.
 
Thanks OP for a helpful video. ‘Dronefriend’ mentioned that it was long but for me no time was wasted compared with many self-appreciating videos I’ve seen. This was a no nonsense and selfless gift of assistance to many members.
 
I’ve flown my P3P about 2-3 feet above water with VPS on with no problems several times. Also to the person that lost their drone due to the boat not being in the same place when RTH was activated, couldn’t you have bypassed RTH and flown it to the new location of where the boat was instead? I had a situation where RTH kicked on its own and when my Phantom got close, I cancelled the RTH and flew it back to me. Only difference I was on land and not water.
 

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