Phantom went for a swim? Rice may not be the best answer.

Uncle Meat · May 7, 2014

I was surfing around the 'net and stumbled across this little study on the best method for recovering a cell phone after it has gone for a swim. Although this study was done with cell phones the physics of successfully drying out a waterlogged electronic component are pretty much the same. Bottom line is there are other household options which may work better than rice!

U.M.

http://www.gazelle.com/thehorn/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Water-Damage-Prevention-and-Recovery.pdf

Cr8tive_leo · May 7, 2014

Re: Phantom went for a swim? Rice may not be the best answer

They didn't take them apart and put them in drying agent. They left them together... wow, you always take apart electronics to get ALL the moisture, might as well stick your phone on top of dehumidifier to get the same result them.

KG4MXV · May 7, 2014

Re: Phantom went for a swim? Rice may not be the best answer

I highly recommend this product.
http://www.amazon.com/Packs-10-Pack-Sil ... s=dry-rite

It is vastly more efficient than rice.
all you have to do is to place 4 to 5 packs of this in a plastic tub with the craft. I would tape the edges to get a airtight seal and remove all batteries and open any doors or compartments of the craft.

and best of the all the packets are reusable.
just place them on a bakers rack in a oven on its lowest setting. (a full sized oven preheated do not skip this step.)
for 1 to 2 hrs and let cool in the oven for 30 min then place them in a ziplock bag and they are ready for use again.

works great on just about anything.
I even keep one in my open bag of crisps to keep them from going stale

Uncle Meat · May 7, 2014

Re: Phantom went for a swim? Rice may not be the best answer

Cr8tive_leo said:
They didn't take them apart and put them in drying agent. They left them together... wow, you always take apart electronics to get ALL the moisture, might as well stick your phone on top of dehumidifier to get the same result them.

Yes they did, I only posted the portion of the article which addressed the substances used to dry out the phones. They took them as far apart as they could. Regardless whether they fully disassembled them or not really has no bearing on their testing of the properties of the different absorbents. Bottom line is rice is NOT the answer.

Here is the prelude to the story. http://www.gazelle.com/thehorn/2014/05/06/gazelles-guide-water-damage-truth-rice-galaxy-everything/

U.M.

Cr8tive_leo · May 7, 2014

Re: Phantom went for a swim? Rice may not be the best answer

No, they put them in the drying agents assembled. They did not take them apart, if they did there would be no moisture shown in the images.

Uncle Meat · May 7, 2014

Re: Phantom went for a swim? Rice may not be the best answer

Cr8tive_leo said:
No, they put them in the drying agents assembled. They did not take them apart, if they did there would be no moisture shown in the images.

From the 2nd link posted. "We dried the phones as best we could using paper towels. We removed batteries and parts (when we could), and shook the phones to get as much water out as possible. Then, we placed the phones in drying agents such as rice and silica gel for the weekend."

Once again whether they totally disassembled them or not really has no bearing on which substance is the best absorbent. :roll:

U.M.

steveeds · May 7, 2014

Re: Phantom went for a swim? Rice may not be the best answer

If mine goes into water I'd pull it apart, wash it out thoroughly with clean fresh water (has to be pretty pure water), flick dry then soak it using around 1/10 of a can of contact cleaner, blow dry for 5 seconds gently with a compressor then finish it off for the day under the heat pump.

I've done this before on electrical equipment with good results. It does get tricky if there are transformers aboard and I've not pulled this PV2 apart as yet and have no intentions of doing so.