does anyone know how to dry out a Phantom that landed in the water? a friend of mine was flying "waypoints" and his battery failed and his Phantom landed in the water. I was just wondering if anyone had a fix or cure for this. It was a stream and if it would have landed 6ft. either side it would have been dry. Thank you for any help or advice.

Take off shell, dry out what you can quickly, blow dry on low!!...low..low... heat and low!! air (like real low) then submerse in uncooked rice for several days,
Seriously, there are several posts on this, do a search and a youtube and do it in a hurry..
If it was salt water it landed in...****EDIT**** read it it's last rights!

Northofthe49th Posted at 2015-3-30 09:51
Take off shell, dry out what you can quickly, blow dry on low!! heat and low!! air (like real low) t ...

its LAST rights!

you will need a 25 pound bag of rice and cover all of it.  blow dry it on low as north said then when it looks dry cover it completely with the rice.  then pray hard, man.

Remove all connections as water tends to wick into these and can take some time to remove otherwise.  During this time you can get corrosion.  I received an P1 with mods that sat on the bottom of a river for about a month.  Much was corroded and the ESC blew FETs so they were trash but the Naza unit the GPS and compass as well as the LED and USB link were salvageable.  I was highly surprised but they were transplanted onto another copter and today are working fine.
The main board was trashed as the capacitors all corroded and blew as well as some corrosion of circuits.  I think mainly parts directly hooked to the battery suffered most.  Look at  caps and inspect chips for sign of blowout.  FET typically get a hole blown in the chip.  

Typically for short fresh water episodes the ESC have been what we have seen as the main failures but YMMV

Here is my friends video of when his Phantom2 Vision Plus landed in the water due to battery drain, it stopped taking video just before it landed in the water. The phantom did what it was suppose to do though when the battery is low.

TomWolves Posted at 2015-4-1 22:01
Here is my friends video of when his Phantom2 Vision Plus landed in the water due to battery drain,  ...

Phantom did what he/she had it configured to do via the Phantom Vision Assistant i.e,
Set to land vs. go home and land unless they just ignored warnings and kept flying, operator error regardless, hope they got it dried out and fixed.

Northofthe49th Posted at 2015-4-1 22:10
Phantom did what he/she had it configured to do via the Phantom Vision Assistant i.e,
Set to land  ...

Yes!, I agree Northofthe49th he didn't have it checked to go home. Yes he dried it out and motors turn, lights on, camera, and gimbal all work. He is going out later to give it a test flight.

wow, this is a tough bird...

Well my friend took his Phantom out for a test flight. It was a NO GO , motors would not come on, front LED's would not come on. Camera & Gimbal worked. I told him to let it set in rice, but he didn't do it.

I nicked a tree branch coming back from a flight over a lake. It fell from about 10', and landed on its back in 6" of water. I was right there, so picked it out within 15 seconds. Pulled the battery out, and shook out what water I could. Took it home, and blowed caned air thru it. Let it sit on top of a heat register overnight with the furnace fan on - blowing air on it. Next day it flew perfectly. No problems. I got lucky!

kengoewey@gmail Posted at 2015-4-5 18:53
I nicked a tree branch coming back from a flight over a lake. It fell from about 10', and landed on  ...

Yes you got lucky ken. My friend wasn't so lucky, he did as you did, but the difference was he was not right there he had to drive and then find it. A came down slow like it was suppose to but hit a bush and fell in the water.

TomWolves Posted at 2015-4-3 08:53
Well my friend took his Phantom out for a test flight. It was a NO GO , motors would not come on, fr ...

I just crashed my Phantom 3 Pro in a river last night. I then proceeded to remove the shell and dried it in rice over night. Just turned it on this am drone and gimble seems fine,  but not sure about camera. It is giving a red and glitchy like playback, not sure if it's the camera or a malfunction with comm. between drone and remote.

Sorry it happened. That would be my luck "knock on wood". It has all that space to land but yet it picks a 6 ft wide stream... REALLY?  Also when setting waypoints, adjust the speed to where the mission is less the 10 minutes so to get back with plenty of battery. You looked like you were going awfully slow.

Just drying over night is normally not enough time for all the moisture to dry out. To many nooks and crannies. Needs a couple of days in the sun after being blow dry or a few days in rice. The key is Heat so all moisture and water is evaporated and completely dry. If. It when you pier up something will get shorted and an electrical short mean a component or two may get fried. Patience is the best bet here. In almost all cases of being water crashed the battery is toast.  Navy ship get electronics and electrical components wet and submerged from time to time. We do fresh water flushes ifnitnwas a salt water submergence then heat lamps for several days after that we check for shots or grounds the  test and power up. Then it's back in service.
Same goes for any electrical components. Most of the time the components survive. Dry it, dry it and dry it some more.

If his is toast I'm selling my V+

All that LAND and it got the water.....Not to be mean or anything....just curious....I wonder if some people have a lower "Karma" balance than others?  Or is it all just dumb luck or unluck?

Its what I sayed as well.. LOL. That would be my luck..

I actually crashed mine into the water the thing didn't shut off correctly when i went to manually turn off the drone took a sharp right and crashed into the water from my bulk head about 15 feet from water...... I was able to recover it and let it dry for over a week. I DID NOT USE RICE. I immediately recovered from water and dried it with a hair dryer for about a hour. I then set it up in front of a heater vent in my house for about a week. The battery expanded so i immediately disposed you don't want to take a risk with that. My buddy let me borrow his battery and after a week of sitting we fired it up. The thing sounds good and turned on, gimble works 100%. I am going to oil the motors and gimble after looking into how to do that properly and then re calibrate , wipe entire drone wit alcohol and then test flight. The good thing is that it powered on!!! Oh and i was flying for about 15 min in 30 degree weather and landed in 40 degree water so the drone was warm. Anyway figured i would take the time to share this.

If you are going to fly around water, always carry a couple of gallons of deionized water and a quart of denatured alcohol. If the water didn't short anything out before you pulled the battery, this will help preserve the electronics.
Pull the battery out and flush with the deionized water, shake out all the water, rinse and repeat. then flush with the denatured alcohol.
After this follow the dry out process. This will greatly improve your odds of saving your electronics.
Deionized water does not conduct electricity and will help wash away any muck and corrosive materials in the ground water.
The denatured alcohol will displace the water and assist in drying.

Gabe R Posted at 2015-9-9 13:58
If his is toast I'm selling my V+

is your V+ still for sale?

ruidoso bill Posted at 2016-2-18 15:58
is your V+ still for sale?

Yes it is. I sent you a friend request so that we can PM and discuss details

Battery is usually always toast but the craft is recoverable. Lots of threads on drying it out.

Here to, $#^#%^$# also crashed p4 into water!! ( stupid me on a late evening mission and clipped an oak branch)
To my amazement, its alive and well. (except for battery, it seems to be toast.)
Went completely under water in pond out back, lucky the battery lights were on to help locate it quickly.
Promptly removed battery and blew out with compressed air and parked it in front of space heater till morning, then decided to remove camera/gimbal assembly from machine and mounted drone and camera in front of wood stove furnace draft for 3 days, blowing warm dry air throughout drone and gimbal assembly,  rotating every few hrs in case of small water pooling in various locations.
all test passed and no longer grounded

I took my P3 4K 2.5km off the coast of Mauritius to capture the dolphins swimming. I ignored the first low battery warning to get another shot, but sadly it went down 800m into the reef taking the footage with it. Couldn’t even locate it on a boat.