First flight out to sea, nail biting stuff
- Thread starter durrantie
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Yup - I used to be a bit nervous flying over water till someone pointed out that in some ways it's less risky. Less likely to damage people or property - and like you said - if it falls 100m the drone is dead in either case.
Ordered a set today. I almost exclusively (95%+) fly over water. I wont use them all the time, but I thought these would give me some interesting water level videos (including take-off's and landings).
Question for you @Adam Morrison. I have a carbon fiber gimbal guard on my P3P, which goes between the landing gear. Do I need to remove it when I use the WaterStrider?
Yes. You'll want to remove the gimbal guard. The WaterStrider has a built-in gimbal guard and it also sits up higher from the ground/water, so it generally provides much better protection than a typical gimbal guard.
Nice Rhode Island video. I was there a month ago myself. I think I captured the sister ship to the sailboat in your video, almost identical look.
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Some gimbal guards interfere with VPS, and make the craft YOYO up and down. I assume you have tested this and that's not a problem, right? Or, do you need disable the VPS to use the Strider?
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That is an awesome video! Getting in close to the subjects really makes this nice. Was out there about a month a go - filmed some along the Cliff Walk. Don't yet have the confidence / experience to get in that close to anything with masts...
We use the WaterStrider regularly with the VPS enabled. In all of our back-to-back testing with and without VPS enabled, we haven't seen any interference or YoYo affects. In some of our early prototypes we did see some interference, but we recognized the problem and designed around it.
That's great to hear it's compatible with P4 VPS. I don't have the latest Go app with VPS disable option. I don't update unless there's a good reason. Your product is quite interesting, as I do a lot of water shots. Last winter I landed on a frozen lake. I got an awesome shot on pristine untouched ice with the sun sparkling through the ice crystals, but the thought of the craft tipping on landing was a bit nerve racking, since walking on the ice was forbidden by local authorities. The Strider would make this a cake walk, no risk of loosing it on landing.
Awesome and interesting use case. We're constantly learning about new ways to use WaterStrider, but we haven't come across this one. Thanks for sharing! #DroneAnywhere
John, what do you have your gains set at. You do beautiful work and I have to really look for the almost non existent visible transitions from your yawing to or from your vertical movements in your videos. Again, you show me how much I have to learn with my P4. I could go from a soft in-tight descending orbit around a sail boat mast into a climbing orbit seamlessly in real turbine helicopters but so far not even close with my P4.
Sent from my SM-N910V using PhantomPilots mobile app
Sent from my SM-N910V using PhantomPilots mobile app
Complete newbie. In fact still waiting for my first drone (P4) to arrive. Terrified of flying over water, so this sparks my interest. Wondering what this would do to the battery life/distance? and also the stability thinking it would introduce additional drag.
Sorry no single sisters, The P4 really does not care if over water or ground, it flys the same, only when you get very low and the VPS starts to track the surface some precautions must be taken (many post on this). Your range will be as good as it gets, usually fly as far as the battery can bring you back safely. My first flights I did not want to go far being scrared to lose it, then my wife said that if it drops a couple of hundred yards out or 2 miles out you still lost it. When your bird arives read read read and understand GO app and how to configure your craft. Go slow take your time and don't get over confident as this will get you into trouble. There is lot's of info in this forum and your fellow pilots will help you with your new addiction, ENJOY and safe flights.
There is about a 25-30% reduction in battery life. With that said, it is possible to land somewhere at a distance from yourself to set up or wait for the conditions for the shot you want. In some filming scenarios this makes up for much of the difference because you're not forced to hover any time you're waiting. There is clearly some additional drag, but we readily achieve 25+ mph with WaterStrider on the P4. If you have the obstacle avoidance cameras activated the drone gets limited to about 22 mph anyhow. As far as normal stability during flights, the drone behaves in a predictable manner to all control inputs
You can get a sense of the stability by watching our Windy Day video where we took out the P3 and P4 when the winds were really heavy and gusting to 31 mph. These are not conditions that I would advise flying in even without WaterStrider, but we wanted to test the limits. For the best experience we recommend a wind limitation of 23-28 mph for the P4 and 17-23 mph for the P3. Still, even in these terrible flying conditions, the P4 performed predictably and takeoffs and landings were simple and anxiety-free.
I fly most of the time between 250 - 300 ft, at that altitude whether I'm flying over water or land my drone is gone. The only difference is that if it were to happen over land at least I will get to pick up the remains. If I'm flying over water it will most likely go to the bottom of the ocean and completely lose the footage in the memory card.
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