Maximum Idle Time

[athearnsd45]

One of the areas I want to start focusing on is railroad photography with my P4A. This is a little tricky, as you normally don't have much advance warning of an approaching train, and having to fire up the drone from scratch, wait while it acquires satellites and sets home point, etc. takes far too much time to allow me to get it into the air to catch a good shot. Having the drone powered up, but without motors started, gives me a huge leg up - it's ready to go almost immediately, and doesn't burn much battery sitting there on the ground.

So, I've heard that doing what I describe can cause overheating and other unwanted issues. Does anyone have guidance on how long I can sit in this mode without overheating or otherwise damaging the drone?

Thanks in advance for any input you may have.

John

 

[BigAl07]

One of the areas I want to start focusing on is railroad photography with my P4A. This is a little tricky, as you normally don't have much advance warning of an approaching train, and having to fire up the drone from scratch, wait while it acquires satellites and sets home point, etc. takes far too much time to allow me to get it into the air to catch a good shot. Having the drone powered up, but without motors started, gives me a huge leg up - it's ready to go almost immediately, and doesn't burn much battery sitting there on the ground.

So, I've heard that doing what I describe can cause overheating and other unwanted issues. Does anyone have guidance on how long I can sit in this mode without overheating or otherwise damaging the drone?

Thanks in advance for any input you may have.

John

There are way too many variables to give you a table of times. It's just like, "How long can I sit outside without getting too hot?"

When I have to let the aircraft sit for long periods on the ground (granted this is usually when I'm testing or updating software etc and at my home or office) I use a small personal fan blowing directly onto the aircraft to help "replicate" airflow from flying through the air.

There is/are on board cooling fans but the aircraft is designed to be cool primarily from air in flight.

 

[Mr. T's Drones]

I have an alternate suggestion. Setup near a signal, such as a crossing. The lights go on quite awhile before the train is close.

 

[Weston Ney]

One of the areas I want to start focusing on is railroad photography with my P4A. This is a little tricky, as you normally don't have much advance warning of an approaching train, and having to fire up the drone from scratch, wait while it acquires satellites and sets home point, etc. takes far too much time to allow me to get it into the air to catch a good shot. Having the drone powered up, but without motors started, gives me a huge leg up - it's ready to go almost immediately, and doesn't burn much battery sitting there on the ground.

So, I've heard that doing what I describe can cause overheating and other unwanted issues. Does anyone have guidance on how long I can sit in this mode without overheating or otherwise damaging the drone?

Thanks in advance for any input you may have.

John

If you do this, definitely do it in the shade. Also you should use a little fan as was already suggested.

 

[MapMaker53]

I wonder how much additional battery drain there is if the props are turning at idle (for cooling) without any additional load? Maybe not a significant amount more than just having the power on. Anyone know?

 

[athearnsd45]

Thanks for the feedback; sounds like leaving the drone powered up without motors started could be trouble. As for setting up near a crossing gate, that's tough, as the signals are timed to give about 30 seconds of notice of an oncoming train. No way I could power up the drone, wait for it to get 8 satellites, set home point, get in the air and frame the shot in that time. I did get a shot recently by letting the drone hover in place with the image framed up, but obviously you only get about 20 minutes or so of linger time by doing that. It's also a good way to attract unwanted attention.

 

[grego122]

One of the areas I want to start focusing on is railroad photography with my P4A. This is a little tricky, as you normally don't have much advance warning of an approaching train, and having to fire up the drone from scratch, wait while it acquires satellites and sets home point, etc. takes far too much time to allow me to get it into the air to catch a good shot. Having the drone powered up, but without motors started, gives me a huge leg up - it's ready to go almost immediately, and doesn't burn much battery sitting there on the ground.

So, I've heard that doing what I describe can cause overheating and other unwanted issues. Does anyone have guidance on how long I can sit in this mode without overheating or otherwise damaging the drone?

Thanks in advance for any input you may have.

John

You can try a they come through about the same time every day or try do a search on the net

Pause and pose

Here's a place where the wild rules and nature mov

www.bing.com

 

[skymonkey]

Don’t know what train you’re trying to capture but you here is https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train-map and https://shipcsx.com/pub_sx_mainpage..._jct/sx.serviceschedulepublic/ServiceSchedule that you can get time service schedules near your location.

 

[Deleted member 62848]

One of the areas I want to start focusing on is railroad photography with my P4A. This is a little tricky, as you normally don't have much advance warning of an approaching train, and having to fire up the drone from scratch, wait while it acquires satellites and sets home point, etc. takes far too much time to allow me to get it into the air to catch a good shot. Having the drone powered up, but without motors started, gives me a huge leg up - it's ready to go almost immediately, and doesn't burn much battery sitting there on the ground.

So, I've heard that doing what I describe can cause overheating and other unwanted issues. Does anyone have guidance on how long I can sit in this mode without overheating or otherwise damaging the drone?

Thanks in advance for any input you may have.

John

Ok me add to this,,I went fishing with p4 which has a wetsuit on,,after dropping me line and landing straight away I turn all off,,well thought I did,,I left drone on,,far out,,problyclose to hour later me back to me van and notice drone was on and very hot,,it could have turned itself off since it supposed to be clever lol...did have me worried about ribbon cables but thankfully it's ok,, now I double check it off....

 

[Basspig]

Not sure about the P4P but I have the P4P v2 and there is a fan running inside the unit when the main props are not started, so I suspect that fan cools the avionics inside.

 

[D0CT0R]

Not sure about the P4P but I have the P4P v2 and there is a fan running inside the unit when the main props are not started, so I suspect that fan cools the avionics inside.

My P4P V1 behaves the same way, when it needs to the internal fan comes on. Never had a problem even with troubled firmware flashing, updates, etc ..

 

[AWD]

I wonder how much additional battery drain there is if the props are turning at idle (for cooling) without any additional load? Maybe not a significant amount more than just having the power on. Anyone know?

I wondered about that too and I believe I may have some free time tomorrow to just fire the P4 up and let it idle on the ground until the battery hits 15% or so.

Thanks for putting the idea back in my head.

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[AWD]

Hmm. This sounded like a good idea. Too bad I started it late at night. As it turns out I finished at 1:30am.

A standard P4 with all software updates. My number 2 battery with 115 cycles on it. Running an iPhone 6S as the monitor.

Hopefully this will format correctly on the screen from my Excel spreadsheet.

I would not have guessed that you could run more than an hour at idle. I would have been wrong!

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