If you land in salt water.

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Seen several post about water landings.

Immediate action drills.

1. Land in fresh water.

Turn off and remove battery.
Shake out excess water and place it in big plastic bag with plenty of rice.
Keep it in a warm place for several days


2. Land in salt water.

Turn off and remove battery.
submerge it ASAP in fresh water to remove the salt water - if camera did not get wet remove it first.
Shake out excess water and place it in big plastic bag with plenty of rice.
Keep it in a warm place for several days.

I would then take it apart completely and clean every single connection and board before I even attempted to power it up.

Any other Ideas Guys/Gals
 
Tap or distilled water, while better than nothing, is not sufficiently clean for intentional exposure to electronics.

Flushing in deionized (DI) water in either case would be the preferred method.
This can be found in most grocery stores here in the US.
 
paulajayne said:
Turn off and remove battery.
Shake out excess water and place it in big plastic bag with plenty of rice.
Keep it in a warm place for several days

I've been hearing about the rice idea for awhile now. Does it mean directly have rice grains touching every single component in the Phantom --- or just put it inside an airtight bag with a layer of rice at the bottom to soak up the water vapor that will emanate from the Phantom?
 
MadMitch88 said:
paulajayne said:
Turn off and remove battery.
Shake out excess water and place it in big plastic bag with plenty of rice.
Keep it in a warm place for several days

just put it inside an airtight bag with a layer of rice at the bottom to soak up the water vapor that will emanate from the Phantom?

That is fine, that is why it can take several days.
 
Yes distilled or deionised water is far better but as not everyone has quick access to it hence I just said water.

Immediate action drill for salt water would be rinse with fresh water and then as soon as possible rinse with softened water.

Then bag with rice.
 
I would recommend opening the shell and dismounting all components. Rinse with fresh water (if it sank in salt water) then alcohol, then blow dry all components and place in rice. Instant rice works much better than just regular dry rice.
 
I sunk my P2 in 1 meter of water. I dismounted it completely within 30mn, including the GoPro that was wet as well, and blown all the parts with a (small) Air compressor.
That was:
Engines, boards, ESC, Flight controller, GPS, Iosd mini, Receiver, Video TX, H3-2D, GoPro, compass.
No Rice for me.
Left it out in the sun for 6 hours , and left the GoPro open on my car dashboard (Careful not leaving it melting though.)
It restarted and still flies like nothing ever happened...
Except for the battery that died when it entered the water)
 
If you immerse damaged electronics in rice overnight, Asian people will come for the rice and in gratitude, will fix your electronics for you
 
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paulajayne said:
Seen several post about water landings.

Immediate action drills.

2. Land in salt water.

Turn off and remove battery.
submerge it ASAP in fresh water to remove the salt water - if camera did not get wet remove it first.

Any other Ideas Guys/Gals

Recommended: Do not just submerge in water but instead use HOT running water to flush it completely. This neutralizes and eliminates the salt quicker. Someone recommended instant rice but actually regular, uncooked rice is more efficient because instant rice can have as much as 12% moisture content to begin with (and contains unwanted additives such as herbs, spices and aromas).
 
I'll let you all know the results in 3 days when it's out of its bag with a mix of long grain/brown/instant/uncooked/pilau and basmati rice. Im drinking the alcohol as we speak to calm the nerves ;)
 
Recommended: Do not just submerge in water but instead use HOT running water to flush it completely. This neutralizes and eliminates the salt quicker. Someone recommended instant rice but actually regular, uncooked rice is more efficient because instant rice can have as much as 12% moisture content to begin with (and contains unwanted additives such as herbs, spices and aromas).
Well...regular dry rice has a moisture content of 13% or greater.

And we are advising using rice, not an instant risotto or pilaf mix...just plain rice.
 
ok, i work with Liquid cooling for computers for some clients. we found distilled water wont short out electronics, so heres what you can do, ive done this with some RC cars and some other electronics (laptops, cell Phones and some cameras) that have fallen in water, including the ocean. remove all power supplies/source. Then rinse with distilled water or alcohol, this will will get as many of the impurities such as salt, chlorine, fluoride and so on off the device. its these impurities that usually ruin circuits. the Rice idea usually works the best or any material that is dehydrated should work. make sure you give it 48-72 hours just to be sure. if you have anything with an LCD screen and it gets water under it, you really SOL unless you want to try and clean the LCD screen which is a pain.
just remember you can clean and do everything right to try and save it, but it can still not work.

if you are able to take the whole Drone apart and try to clean the boards individually. with out the plastic casing.
 
Obviously deionized and/or distilled water is best if easy to get quickly. My opinion is if you don't have it handy, it is not worth the time delay to go get some instead of just rinsing vigorously under normal sink faucet tap water.

Couple reasons I say just use tap water....

Tap water has few highly conductive highly concentrated conductive crap in it. The stuff that remains after drying will have such a high resistance that it is very unlikely to cause any 'shorts' or even changes in very precision calibrated circuits.

I base this on nearly 30 years of repair on precision industrial electronic servo drives (aka ESC) and amplifiers. 80% of this electronics comes in caked with 1/16 inch of crap, often including carbon dust, from years of use in dirty production shops. I have had our techs use 409 or equiv cleaner and spray on all parts, including the pc boards, let sit for 10-20 minutes, scrub them off with small paint brushes, then rinse off well under tap water, sit in sink for an hour or so, then spray off with compressed air and reassemble. Although this is SOP with us and many other electronic repair places, it is not widely advertised. I share it here so folks can feel better about just using tap water to rinse. In all these years, I cannot point to a single return repair due to our tap water cleaning.

edit to fix typo SOP
 
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