Flying over water

[Phantom 4 Adventures]

Hello again averybody. How ar you all doing. I have a question regarding flying over water. Dam or ocean or river etc. I just wat to know the procedure for doing that safely the settings involved and so on and what to do and what not to do.
Thanks

 

[msinger]

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• The water is an obstacle (like the ground), so make sure you can see your Phantom with your eyes if you must fly very close to the surface.
• Make sure you have enough battery power left to make it back to the home point. If your Phantom lands in deep water, you will likely not recover it.

There are really no special settings needed to fly over water. Just use common sense

 

[Phantom 4 Adventures]

Hello thanks for the insight. I was wondering about rhe glare on the surface with the bottom vps and sonar sensors. Im bringing this up cause ive watched a few videos on youtube and read a few stories and all have different opinions. So im not sure at all ho to go about it. Theres a guy on youtube his channel is named The Bee. You must go see it it is amazing he chases ships in the deep ocean with his p3p and i read a comment on his channel where he said he doesnt turn his vps off. Other people say you have to. So im completely in the dark about this.

 

[msinger]

You might want to consider disabling VPS if you're going to fly within a few feet of the surface of the water. That's a pretty dangerous thing to do though.

 

[Phantom 4 Adventures]

I really dont intend to do that dont worry. I love mu drone to much to go look for trouble. Thanks for the help.

 

[blmeanie]

As others have said in other posts, the RTH feature can be troublesome if you launch from the boat and the boat moves. Many people set RTH to hover. You can periodically reset the home spot too. I change my battery warning to a higher % just so I get it back to the boat earlier without risking anything.

 

[Phantom 4 Adventures]

As others have said in other posts, the RTH feature can be troublesome if you launch from the boat and the boat moves. Many people set RTH to hover. You can periodically reset the home spot too. I change my battery warning to a higher % just so I get it back to the boat earlier without risking anything.

Ok thank you so much for the tip. Ive never flown from a boat before but i am keen to try it at some time.

 

[tcope]

I just wat to know the procedure for doing that safely the settings involved and so on and what to do and what not to do.

Don't land on the water.

You don't need to turn VPS off. This is a throw back thought to the P3. The P3 is programmed to use the ultrasonics to adjust it's altitude. The P4 does not do this. Glare does not affect ultrasonics and there is no reason the P4 should be using the downward positioning system over water unless you are landing on the water. See above.

 

[MapMaker53]

1) Make sure your critical battery action is set to "RTH", and is not set to "Land"
2) Make sure to take off with a fully charged battery.

 

[Phantom 4 Adventures]

Ok good thanks so much you guys another question. I just took the bird out for a quick 10 min fight. Is it normal for the motors to get a bit hot if you touch them. I came apon it now when i packed it in the backpack and i just thought to feel the motors before i closed it.

 

[Phantom 4 Adventures]

It never crossed my mind before to do so it just popped up now to feel them

 

[Brockrock]

Ok good thanks so much you guys another question. I just took the bird out for a quick 10 min fight. Is it normal for the motors to get a bit hot if you touch them. I came apon it now when i packed it in the backpack and i just thought to feel the motors before i closed it.

They will get warm to the touch after flying, but they should not get so warm that you cannot touch them. The thing to check when you do your post flight is, do they all feel about the same temperature. If one or more seems hotter than the others, this may be something to keep an eye on.

 

[Phantom 4 Adventures]

They all feel about the same to me but not so that u can not touch them. But from now on ill keep an eye on them

 

[Meta4]

Ok thank you so much for the tip. Ive never flown from a boat before but i am keen to try it at some time.

Flying from a boat puts you in an unforgiving environment where one mistake may be the last for the Phantom.
It requires additional skills and techniques beyond what you use for flying from land.
If you fly from a boat, you need to be familiar with all normal operations and anything extra you will use like hand catching and resetting the home point.
Out on a boat is not the place to learn these.

 

[tcope]

1) Make sure your critical battery action is set to "RTH", and is not set to "Land"
2) Make sure to take off with a fully charged battery.

The Phantom will always land at critical battery. I think what you mean is what I mentioned above, make sure RTH is set to Hover instead of RTH.

 

[Phantom 4 Adventures]

Flying from a boat puts you in an unforgiving environment where one mistake may be the last for the Phantom.
It requires additional skills and techniques beyond what you use for flying from land.
If you fly from a boat, you need to be familiar with all normal operations and anything extra you will use like hand catching and resetting the home point.
Out on a boat is not the place to learn these.

I do have some knowledge about hand catching i do it all the time it just feels safer for me as for the setting to hover. Ill take your word for it. I know about it i might just that day forget about it as it might be to big of a moment for me. Lol.

 

[Phantom 4 Adventures]

Thats plans for the future when i feel ive got enough skills to step up my flying. For now im more than happy with flying from land and on land.

 

[bhartwell]

As others here have said, with a P4 or later, there really are no issues other then common sense.

I fly over the ocean all the time. The biggest risk is getting caught by a wave that is higher then it looks from shore. Chasing waves makes for some great video, but is inherently risky. I have had a few close calls where I thought I had judged the hight and movement of a wave correctly, but had to course correct in a hurry when I realized it would have engulfed my drone. The other issue I did run into wasn’t the water, it was the sand. I usually launch from the beach. Either off a blanket or rock or packed sand. In one case, I bit of sand got in my gimbal and I started getting “gimbal engine overloaded” errors. Blew out the sand and it was fine, but the lesson was learned.

 

[PhantomWetSuits]

Ok good thanks so much you guys another question. I just took the bird out for a quick 10 min fight. Is it normal for the motors to get a bit hot if you touch them. I came apon it now when i packed it in the backpack and i just thought to feel the motors before i closed it.

The motors will get to 90 to 103 degrees on a very very hot day, but no worries they motors are rated much higher , overheating is not an issue for those motors . We fly over the water almost everyday and we have never had any issues , and we try to fly as close to the water as possible to gain some momentum shots of a nice sweep up.

You can see are videos at phantomrain.org This is - 6 degrees over the lake skimming and sweeping, GPS remains sold.

 

[PhantomWetSuits]

As others here have said, with a P4 or later, there really are no issues other then common sense.

I fly over the ocean all the time. The biggest risk is getting caught by a wave that is higher then it looks from shore. Chasing waves makes for some great video, but is inherently risky. I have had a few close calls where I thought I had judged the hight and movement of a wave correctly, but had to course correct in a hurry when I realized it would have engulfed my drone. The other issue I did run into wasn’t the water, it was the sand. I usually launch from the beach. Either off a blanket or rock or packed sand. In one case, I bit of sand got in my gimbal and I started getting “gimbal engine overloaded” errors. Blew out the sand and it was fine, but the lesson was learned.

We are just testing with the sand now as a lot of people are struggling with the dessert ,beaches and wind blowing debris . So far the Phantomrain Wet Suits are providing excellent coverage on this as we will be posting a new video soon . The Phantom Wet Suits come with a Surge Ring that protects the bottom of the Gimbal ring from any water , sand , rocks, grit, ect .
Phantomrain.org