- Joined
- Aug 14, 2016
- Messages
- 1,075
- Reaction score
- 169
- Age
- 40
I live in the desert. It gets hot here. How hot is too hot? 104 Degrees Fahrenheit? What's your opinion? What should I be looking out for while flying when it's hot?
How hot is too hot to fly?
- Thread starter KingDad1985
- Start date
I would imagine that the bird can handle any temps that you can! You may see some reduction in flight time, batteries dislike heat even more than cold. And the air density is going to go down as the air heats up. Also, your tablet might start crapping out on you if it gets too hot. You could see some color change or graininess in the images as the camera heats up, but there shouldn't be any actual damage to it.
We had a shoot a while back in July and it was in the high 90s. The drone operated just fine but charging the batteries outside was a no go. They wouldn't take a charge until they were in A/C and had cooled down a bit.
DJI says 104F is the max, but some display devices will overheat. I expect the display device to be your limiting factor at times. I know my iPad Mini2 overheats at around 93F to 95F. I generally fly from inside my car if I'm flying my P3P in high temps above 90F, which is what I fly with my Mini2.
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2016
- Messages
- 1,075
- Reaction score
- 169
- Age
- 40
I do, just bought one 2 days ago, but I still have my P3P too. I don't know why, I guess I'm attached to the emotions of where we've flown together. I should sell it but just can't. Odd, eh?
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2016
- Messages
- 1,075
- Reaction score
- 169
- Age
- 40
No not odd. I'm so close to pulling the trigger on a Refurbished P3P I've found online. Couple more days & I'll most likely have it ordered. Something about the P3P is very appealing to me. Not sure what it is though [emoji7]
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2016
- Messages
- 1,551
- Reaction score
- 589
- Age
- 48
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2016
- Messages
- 1,075
- Reaction score
- 169
- Age
- 40
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2016
- Messages
- 209
- Reaction score
- 44
- Age
- 54
I live in Phx, Az I have flown 110+F plus many times... I cool My Batteries Before flight... Inside the house room temp 72~ In the car A/C.. If you start with a 100+ F battery.. By the end, of a flight, you will get battery temps 140+
not good.... Cool your battery first... You'll be fine 
( Do not paint your Phantom BLACK LOL )
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2016
- Messages
- 209
- Reaction score
- 44
- Age
- 54
Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones
I was being conservative
It was cooking as far as I am concerned??
Just keep them cooler than that
you will be fine...Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones
So what happens if I'm droning away in 110F and the battery overheats? Does the aircraft just drop out of the sky?
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2016
- Messages
- 209
- Reaction score
- 44
- Age
- 54
Yeah I remember seeing it somewhere in the guidelines that the AC will reduce power and you should land at that point and time.
Okay, so I tried to fly a Litchi mission today out in the desert. It was 110F after I hiked out 2.5 miles to the launch point. Everything looked normal on startup (despite the fact that I had forgotten my regular glasses and was using polarized sunglasses, which made the iPad almost impossible to read).
I took off, climbed up about 10 meters. Tried to start the mission. It looks like it was trying to upload the mission, but it terminated with a failure dialog which I could not read. Retried, same result.
I didn't want to push my luck, in case the upload succeeded but dropped a bit or two in the process, sending my toy over the horizon to Kuala Lumpur. So I gave up on Litchi and manually sent the aircraft up to about 100 meters, and flew around a bit for about 10 minutes. I was having a lot of trouble seeing the battery info bar, so I decided I would make it a short flight. Right about then the Litchi app vapor locked and refused to respond to any of my finger presses. The aircraft was far enough away that I could not really tell what the orientation was, so I hit the RTH button on the controller, and the bird came home.
Conclusion: Aircraft seems fine, performed well considering the density altitude. No overheating issues that I could detect. RTH worked.
The iPad 4 mini, on the other hand, choked. In it's defense it was pretty hot, and probably not made for these kinds of temps.
So will it fly? Apparently it will. But as others have mentioned the iPad is the weak link in high temp operations. I'm wondering if the DJI Goggles might allow for high temp operations?
I took off, climbed up about 10 meters. Tried to start the mission. It looks like it was trying to upload the mission, but it terminated with a failure dialog which I could not read. Retried, same result.
I didn't want to push my luck, in case the upload succeeded but dropped a bit or two in the process, sending my toy over the horizon to Kuala Lumpur. So I gave up on Litchi and manually sent the aircraft up to about 100 meters, and flew around a bit for about 10 minutes. I was having a lot of trouble seeing the battery info bar, so I decided I would make it a short flight. Right about then the Litchi app vapor locked and refused to respond to any of my finger presses. The aircraft was far enough away that I could not really tell what the orientation was, so I hit the RTH button on the controller, and the bird came home.
Conclusion: Aircraft seems fine, performed well considering the density altitude. No overheating issues that I could detect. RTH worked.
The iPad 4 mini, on the other hand, choked. In it's defense it was pretty hot, and probably not made for these kinds of temps.
So will it fly? Apparently it will. But as others have mentioned the iPad is the weak link in high temp operations. I'm wondering if the DJI Goggles might allow for high temp operations?
Honestly yes it was hot out. But I did a test the other night. Out was about 85 out. Just had the app running and the quad on and linked. No flying. I thought the iPad was going to catch fire. I've never had an app strain the iPad as much as the latest versions of GO.
