A bird knocked my drone out of the sky and into a river. Is there any hope in reviving a fully immersed drone? If not, what parts might be salvageable?

Yes, it is, 1st off, bin the battery, when it happened to me, i partially removed the cover, removed the whole camera /gimbal setup, including the underneath plate thats on the drone, stripped down the gimbal and camera, i.e i was left with the little black camera, placed the whole lot in a cooling down oven (was about 100C or there abouts and turned off) then placed it in an airing cupboard over night, it was bone dry the next morning and flew well and has done a year later.... YMMV.

When electronics meet water the best thing to do is turn it off ASAP & don't turn back on, then take it apart as far as you possibly can, dry completely under very low heat for 12-24 hrs (rinse first with alcohol or DI if water was salty), and then reassemble.

I've had laptops immersed in seawater while on, and immediately turned off and dunked in a bucket of fresh water, and then followed the above process and had them boot up on first try (well OK not every time... but if it's going to happen that's how to do it).
Worst things you can do are try to power up while still wet, or just let it sit for days with water in it.

Yeah, even some desiccation packs would help.



RedHotPoker

Hello and good day PowellSkier. I am sorry to know what happened to your previous flight with your DJI Phantom 4.  Since this issue is happened on your Drone. It appears that this issue needs to be diagnosed by our DJI repair team. You can contact our DJI support team to start up a repair case by using this link: https://www.dji.com/repair. We hope to hear from you soon and looking forward to resolve this as soon as possible. Thank for your support.

DJI Stephen Posted at 3-3 07:24
Hello and good day PowellSkier. I am sorry to know what happened to your previous flight with your DJI Phantom 4.  Since this issue is happened on your Drone. It appears that this issue needs to be diagnosed by our DJI repair team. You can contact our DJI support team to start up a repair case by using this link: https://www.dji.com/repair. We hope to hear from you soon and looking forward to resolve this as soon as possible. Thank for your support.

[view_image]

lol yeah, let it marinate for a couple weeks while setting up a repair case...

You'll be very lucky if it goes up again.  Water is one of the worst killers.

ALABAMA Posted at 3-3 10:37
You'll be very lucky if it goes up again.  Water is one of the worst killers.

Water kills the battery. The drone will do amazingly well in fresh water. I'm sorry to say. I know very well. lol My P3 was under a waterfall for 3 days and I rinsed out the brown silt. I took it a part and put it in my dehydrator. I was surprised the camera wasn't even hurt. That was a year and a half ago.   

sorry to know that

It should fly again, as long as like others have said you let it dry and without the battery. The best thing I ever did was immerse my immersed stuff in RICE  for about 3 days. Then blew it out and let sit 24 hours. If salt water, then rinse with Denatured alcohol and proceed as above.

BSilverthorn Posted at 3-4 04:22
It should fly again, as long as like others have said you let it dry and without the battery. The best thing I ever did was immerse my immersed stuff in RICE  for about 3 days. Then blew it out and let sit 24 hours. If salt water, then rinse with Denatured alcohol and proceed as above.

Doesn't have to be denatured EtOh. Can use isopropyl, etc.

patiam Posted at 3-4 09:52
Doesn't have to be denatured EtOh. Can use isopropyl, etc.

Yep should work as well, I would stay at 90% or higher isopropyl alcohol if you can. Isopropyl around here has water in it if it less at times. Just check your bottle, it will still evap, but why put back what your hoping to clean... Either way your going down the right track, I have fixed quite few water / beer submerge laptops for folks with that technique.

BSilverthorn Posted at 3-4 14:01
Yep should work as well, I would stay at 90% or higher isopropyl alcohol if you can. Isopropyl around here has water in it if it less at times. Just check your bottle, it will still evap, but why put back what your hoping to clean... Either way your going down the right track, I have fixed quite few water / beer submerge laptops for folks with that technique.

hell, even DI H2O is better than salt water!
my point was more that the denatured aspect is not at all important here (for those that aren't familiar with these terms). regular very high proof grain alcohol, isopropyl, etc. will work.

if you don't have any of that, plain water rinse is better than letting salt water dry in place.