- Joined
- Aug 12, 2015
- Messages
- 17
- Reaction score
- 4
- Age
- 64
I took my solo for a swim last Sunday. I was busy flying shots of my wife and pup in the river - over shot and clipped a branch - went into full brush cutter mode and had a nice soft landing in 4' of water.
No gimbal, and a GoPro 3 -
No problem finding it. The battery LED's were flashing (could not get it to stop actually)
I poured the water out, and packed it up, got home and propped everything up in front of a fan - for 48 hours.
Last night I fired up the ship - it linked to the controller and it went satellite hunting. First sigh of relief. Next I spun on the props - and did a fly-manual take off, hover and landing. Everything checked out. The GoPro powers up fine but is a little foggy now. A bud tells me that this will dissipate over time - I am deep cycling it on low heat for a few days to see if it improves the image quality.
Also, the 3DR smart battery - acted goofy in that it would not cycle down no matter what I did. An LED remained on. I let that dry out for the same 48 hours and when I inspected it, the LED was off - so I charged it up under a watchful eye and it seems to be back. I do not however keep it in the house anymore - Not sure I want an Li-ion fire in my house ( ) That being said, the only thing that happened was immersion in clean water - no impact or penetration. I observed no heat and no pillowing of the cells in the case.
So there it is. Many lessons learned - very little lost in the process. For that, I regard myself as lucky.
A friend suggests Waterbuoy - Miniature Floatation Device
I think I will try a pair… Any other suggestions?
Oh, and here is the footage from the day. I had to do a file recovery as the recording ab-ended and the GoPro was not able to close the file properly.
No gimbal, and a GoPro 3 -
No problem finding it. The battery LED's were flashing (could not get it to stop actually)
I poured the water out, and packed it up, got home and propped everything up in front of a fan - for 48 hours.
Last night I fired up the ship - it linked to the controller and it went satellite hunting. First sigh of relief. Next I spun on the props - and did a fly-manual take off, hover and landing. Everything checked out. The GoPro powers up fine but is a little foggy now. A bud tells me that this will dissipate over time - I am deep cycling it on low heat for a few days to see if it improves the image quality.
Also, the 3DR smart battery - acted goofy in that it would not cycle down no matter what I did. An LED remained on. I let that dry out for the same 48 hours and when I inspected it, the LED was off - so I charged it up under a watchful eye and it seems to be back. I do not however keep it in the house anymore - Not sure I want an Li-ion fire in my house ( ) That being said, the only thing that happened was immersion in clean water - no impact or penetration. I observed no heat and no pillowing of the cells in the case.
So there it is. Many lessons learned - very little lost in the process. For that, I regard myself as lucky.
A friend suggests Waterbuoy - Miniature Floatation Device
I think I will try a pair… Any other suggestions?
Oh, and here is the footage from the day. I had to do a file recovery as the recording ab-ended and the GoPro was not able to close the file properly.