First off before post my tale of a novice mistake I want to tip my hat to all the excellent long time posters here! I've been lurking and learning for 8 months now and never had to post a question yet because there was always a bunch of threads answering any little thing I needed info on - this forum is the best!
Got my P3S last December and been having a blast - always careful but then had a nearly fatal incident a few weeks ago. I took my P3S on vacation to our house on a small lake with the plan of getting some nice footage of the property. The house is perched up on a heavily wooded cliff above the water and the only place to take off was a dock platform on the water. Nice sunny calm day and the first flight went fine with a tense but careful and successful landing. On the second flight everything went fine until I landed and for some reason when I went to turn off the props by holding down the left stick I instead pulled down of both sticks and the P3S skipped straight back right into the water - complete brain fart error! The water by the dock is shallow and I was in and had it back out in 3-5 seconds, it was off and I immediately pulled the battery and shook out the water as much water as I could. I thought I had ruined the drone and I didn't really have the tools to take is apart so I dried it as much as I could and the left it sitting in a spot outside but covered where it was getting some indirect sun and breeze for the rest of the day and the next day too.
I basically thought that the worse thing I could do was turn it back on too early before all the water was gone so after getting it home I just let is sit in a dry area for another two weeks - didn't really need fly it and was frankly dreading confirming it was dead. I finally this week got the guts up to power it up and to my surprise it booted up just fine! I had been reading a lot about this and so decided to re-calibrate the IMU and then take it out and re-cal'ed the compass. I took it to my regular flying spot and had two perfect full battery flights, tested RTH a few times, practiced flying ATTI like I always do and it was flawless - no damage from the swim and operating good as new - whew!
Lessons learned - 1) Much more practice before flying around water again 2) if it ever gets wet again don't panic but also don't rush and let it COMPLETELY dry before starting 3) keep reading this forum - I learn something new and useful every time
Got my P3S last December and been having a blast - always careful but then had a nearly fatal incident a few weeks ago. I took my P3S on vacation to our house on a small lake with the plan of getting some nice footage of the property. The house is perched up on a heavily wooded cliff above the water and the only place to take off was a dock platform on the water. Nice sunny calm day and the first flight went fine with a tense but careful and successful landing. On the second flight everything went fine until I landed and for some reason when I went to turn off the props by holding down the left stick I instead pulled down of both sticks and the P3S skipped straight back right into the water - complete brain fart error! The water by the dock is shallow and I was in and had it back out in 3-5 seconds, it was off and I immediately pulled the battery and shook out the water as much water as I could. I thought I had ruined the drone and I didn't really have the tools to take is apart so I dried it as much as I could and the left it sitting in a spot outside but covered where it was getting some indirect sun and breeze for the rest of the day and the next day too.
I basically thought that the worse thing I could do was turn it back on too early before all the water was gone so after getting it home I just let is sit in a dry area for another two weeks - didn't really need fly it and was frankly dreading confirming it was dead. I finally this week got the guts up to power it up and to my surprise it booted up just fine! I had been reading a lot about this and so decided to re-calibrate the IMU and then take it out and re-cal'ed the compass. I took it to my regular flying spot and had two perfect full battery flights, tested RTH a few times, practiced flying ATTI like I always do and it was flawless - no damage from the swim and operating good as new - whew!
Lessons learned - 1) Much more practice before flying around water again 2) if it ever gets wet again don't panic but also don't rush and let it COMPLETELY dry before starting 3) keep reading this forum - I learn something new and useful every time
