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As a newbie I fly a great deal over the water; easy to learn the controls and no chance of hurting anyone. I do appreciate that if it goes down there if a slim/no chance of recovery but for me I rather loose my bird than cause damage to people or property. The only time I had a "lost connection" was in a park, it did come back an park itself by my feet. Irrationally, I am still too scared to let it out of my sight, kept it within 300 meters so far. I realize if it goes down in the water (for some reason) it doesn't really matter if I am 30 meters away or 1000.. but still. Going out tonite for some sunset shots, I have promised myself to do at least 500 meters!
I do a lot of flying over water. I built a couple of quads just for this purpose using the Dex shells. Here are some vids of landing in the pool.
View from the head cam
These were without the gimbal and with the GoPro in its waterproof housing. I am still perfecting a waterproof gimbal that will carry the GoPro in its housing.
I have crashed this one in water when filming a whitewater race and all survived including the GoPro which got a dunking.
View from the head cam
These were without the gimbal and with the GoPro in its waterproof housing. I am still perfecting a waterproof gimbal that will carry the GoPro in its housing.
I have crashed this one in water when filming a whitewater race and all survived including the GoPro which got a dunking.
Vision Positioning System-- can be turned on or off. Consensus, turn it off when outside flying-- turn is on when inside flying-- it detects the height of the Phantom at low altitude and it the hover stability will be better closer to the ground. It is the sensor with the two lenses on the bottom of the Phantom.
You can check what I wrote about the Sea and ships in here:
What if any issues flying around a large ship? | DJI Phantom Forum
for more vids and photos you can check @besiktasshipyard instagram account.
Besiktas Shipyard on instagram
What if any issues flying around a large ship? | DJI Phantom Forum
for more vids and photos you can check @besiktasshipyard instagram account.
Besiktas Shipyard on instagram
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I agree with you 100%. If more folks here put in more time over water there would be a drastic reduction of building/tree crashes along with the endless gimbal repair threads.
Flying today over the Severn estuary, found some friendly fishermen. Nice to wave. Works like a dream over water, if you launch from a cliff it gives you range and safety. The only issue I find is I wanted to do a POI flight around them but because it was below me it wont let you activate it 
My first time was over 20cm deep salty sea. Through time and experience I become more relax when I fly longer distances. In this video, Phantom was over 1 km away. Actually I am much more stressed flying over people or houses.
Anyway it is pretty much the same result if it falls down from 100m in to the sea or in the wood mile away.
But beside the parachute (especially for the professional video city purposes), I'm thinking about some kind of float. Even it looks unprofessional, I like the 4 underprops bottle system. I am just concerned about decreased flying performance.
Anyway it is pretty much the same result if it falls down from 100m in to the sea or in the wood mile away.
But beside the parachute (especially for the professional video city purposes), I'm thinking about some kind of float. Even it looks unprofessional, I like the 4 underprops bottle system. I am just concerned about decreased flying performance.
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Did a bunch of flying over water this summer in Alaska out over the Bering Sea. Nothing to worry about flying over water, it performed flawlessly. There are concerns when you launch from a moving boat, which are already discussed elsewhere and I won't re-hash here, but even those are manageable if you are aware of them.
I've heard others say you can have increased signal range over water due to signal bounce and less interference. Don't know about this but it makes sense to me. Furthest I've had mine over water is 1.5 miles and had no signal problems.
I zip-tied 4 keychain floats to my phantom "just in case" (see photo). Thankfully I did not need to test if they worked. But they are very buoyant so my thought is they would. They had no discernible impact on performance and could not be seen in the camera view.
I know somebody else who crashed their P3P into salt water. The battery was toast but after a fresh-water rinse and a long drying period it is now just fine, so its not necessarily destroyed if this happens, though probably wise not to test.
I've heard others say you can have increased signal range over water due to signal bounce and less interference. Don't know about this but it makes sense to me. Furthest I've had mine over water is 1.5 miles and had no signal problems.
I zip-tied 4 keychain floats to my phantom "just in case" (see photo). Thankfully I did not need to test if they worked. But they are very buoyant so my thought is they would. They had no discernible impact on performance and could not be seen in the camera view.
I know somebody else who crashed their P3P into salt water. The battery was toast but after a fresh-water rinse and a long drying period it is now just fine, so its not necessarily destroyed if this happens, though probably wise not to test.
Attachments
Yup, lights. I forgot to turn them off. I das just doing an after dinne flight and didn't plan on taking any pictures. But I took one anyway.
Guys I purchased a few of these buoys a few years ago: WaterBuoy - Miniature Flotation Device I got them after I crashed my P V1 into the sea. Luckily got it back as there was a nearby fisherman that had some scuba gear. Only thing that was salvageable was the FC and motors. Everything else was fried GoPro, ECS's etc. After that incident I stick 2 of those buoys in my quads when flying over water. 2 should be enough for 2KG AUW craft. I also cover all the electronics with Corrosion X, just in case.
If your quad descends quickly to enough depth, the waterbuoy will never inflate.
That is some GOOD flying! Nice job.I keep VPS on all the time. I've flown ATTI five feet above the water with 55mph ground speed on a few occasions. The sonic altimeter seems to work just fine below 10 feet over water. Granted, I haven't flown over 10 foot ocean swells yet, but the P3 does a great job of not "flying off a cliff" either. For example, I've had it follow (automatically) the slope of my roof at a two foot alitude, then maintain it's "absolute" altitude (with a small drop of a few inches) when leaving the roof for the yard--instead of plummeting down at 500 feet per minute to 2 feet off the grass.
One thing I like to use ATTI mode for, is at the beginning of most flights: to see what the actual wind direction and velocity is at a given altitude--it's often quite different than what's shown on uavforecast, for example (as much as I love that site).
Here's the last video I did--for a friend who's trying to sell his sailboat. The opening scene is at about 15 feet above the water, moving at 50mph. I still had a bit of a cross wind component, and mixed with a crab angle to compensate for both the wind and his motion, his boat appears at one side of the screen.
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