How to fly a Phantom 3 Professional from a Sailboat

gringorio · Apr 18, 2016

Disclaimer: This is not my video. That said, due to my interest and others who have wondered about launching and landing from a boat, I found this video very helpful:

NormanNormal · Apr 18, 2016

Wow those are some challenging hand catch conditions to say the least. I predict one day he is going to get sliced up amd its going to davy jones locker. I sure hope not though.

Jason Porembski · Apr 18, 2016

If that's not butt puckering I don't know what is.

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BillH · Apr 18, 2016

A disaster looking for a place to happen. Let's give that about a 5% possible success rate with any given group of pilots. How many will run out of battery before they luck out and catch it? How many will center punch another boat?

Jason Porembski · Apr 18, 2016

The best part he needs 50% battery life to land it. My god

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WetDog · Apr 18, 2016

It isn't as hard as it looks. His big mistake is to keep the boat moving - that adds an unnecessary aspect of complexity. I take off and land from my 24 foot powerboat all of the time. That's a bit easier as I have (barely) enough room to let the P3 take off on the back deck. I hand catch.

The drift is relatively easy to deal with. Come on the lee side of the drone and drift in or just fly in ATTI mode and hand fly it - useful if the wind and current are causing a complex drift. It's the swell that is going to chop things off. It really is an acquired skill. If you are interested in it, try it on a flat calm day until you're comfortable then advance as tolerated. Just like anything else.

You will, if you have half a brain, leave plenty of battery capacity available for landing. I have spent a good five minutes getting it set up, waving off and trying it again. If you have spare electrons, it's not so bad. If you don't your blood pressure and pulse tend to rise rapidly as the voltage on the bird drops.

The upsides are you get lots of range, lots of neat views and very little interference. And if it crashes, you don't have to worry about spending hours looking for it. It's gone.

BillH · Apr 18, 2016

Why couldn't he set a dynamic home point at the device? But setting a dynamic home point on the app, this will set the home point to where ever your device / RC is located. Then it should hover over the boat and his RC. That would give him a lot better chance of catching it.

WetDog · Apr 18, 2016

Dynamic home point doesn't work on P3's. I guess it did on Phantom 2's. Autopilot has a dynamic home point function, but I don't like using AP on the boat - I'm dealing with enough stuff just flying manually. You can update the home point from the RC although there are threads that this isn't working at present.

If it ever stops raining when I'm not at work I want to spend some time playing with that. Since I keep the boat powered off I don't and only fly for 10 minutes or so, I don't really have to worry about losing the home point. I'll anchor if I'm drifting a lot - mostly to not have to worry about where the boat is AND where the drone is. Keep It Simple, stupid.

BillH · Apr 18, 2016

OK, thanks for that. I didn't realize it doesn't work on the Ph3.

WetDog · Apr 18, 2016

One of DJI's little 'improvements'. Probably at the behest of some lawyer who came up with a scenario where some Compleat Idiot could blame DJI for creating a dangerous situation by allowing him to do TWO THINGS AT ONCE. The horror.

Jason Porembski · Apr 18, 2016

WetDog said:
It isn't as hard as it looks. His big mistake is to keep the boat moving - that adds an unnecessary aspect of complexity. I take off and land from my 24 foot powerboat all of the time. That's a bit easier as I have (barely) enough room to let the P3 take off on the back deck. I hand catch.

The drift is relatively easy to deal with. Come on the lee side of the drone and drift in or just fly in ATTI mode and hand fly it - useful if the wind and current are causing a complex drift. It's the swell that is going to chop things off. It really is an acquired skill. If you are interested in it, try it on a flat calm day until you're comfortable then advance as tolerated. Just like anything else.

You will, if you have half a brain, leave plenty of battery capacity available for landing. I have spent a good five minutes getting it set up, waving off and trying it again. If you have spare electrons, it's not so bad. If you don't your blood pressure and pulse tend to rise rapidly as the voltage on the bird drops.

The upsides are you get lots of range, lots of neat views and very little interference. And if it crashes, you don't have to worry about spending hours looking for it. It's gone.

It's definitely easier when the boat is not moving. The movement and speed is what makes this more butt puckering than a 4x4 spot.

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WetDog · Apr 18, 2016

Some people like a challenge, I suppose. That and they have good health insurance.

I actually use my Kevlar knife gloves hand catching on the boat. I keep them there so I don't slice off important bits gutting fish on said moving watercraft. Never needed them but I'm an ER doc so I see this sort of stuff all of the time at work, don't need to deal with it on days off.