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Winter flying
3791 11 2016-11-8
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JRodrigues
lvl.1
Flight distance : 181781 ft
Switzerland
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Hello everyone,
I have some experience flying my phantom 4 during good temperatures,but haven't flown in winter time. What are your experiences regarding this situation? Temperatures are already at the 0° C here in Switzerland,and today the even dropped to -4. Has anyone had any problems with low temperatures flying?

  Thanks and hope to hear from you all soon
2016-11-8
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rodger
Captain
Flight distance : 20145135 ft
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United States
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In the extreme cold your batteries will not last as long so take heed to your low battery warnings. Also be aware of your camera lens fogging when removing your Phantom from the warm air into the cold air.
2016-11-8
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JRodrigues
lvl.1
Flight distance : 181781 ft
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rodger Posted at 2016-11-8 20:25
In the extreme cold your batteries will not last as long so take heed to your low battery warnings.  ...

Yes, I know that, what I was asking is if anyone had experienced issues flying in cold weather and what they where, and how to minimize the problems that cold may cause.
  Thanks
2016-11-8
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mdh222
lvl.1
Flight distance : 8652 ft
Canada
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I sure hope they will be robust! Sure a 10%-15% drop in performance due to the cold WX, but then again, where I live it gets to -45 deg C (-65 w/ Windchill!!). At present, I do not have the P4 (in the market), so I'm sure I'll be updating this thread in the future.
2016-11-8
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rodger
Captain
Flight distance : 20145135 ft
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United States
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JRodrigues Posted at 2016-11-8 11:15
Yes, I know that, what I was asking is if anyone had experienced issues flying in cold weather and ...

DJI offers aids for increasing your battery life in cold weather as well. I would imagine that you could have issues in extreme cold making plastic parts a bit brittles well.
2016-11-10
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DJI-Jamie
DJI team
Flight distance : 112405 ft
United States
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Unfortunately they don't have a battery heater yet for the P4. So you would want to let it sit in the aircraft turned on before flight.
2016-11-11
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fans8b45f001
First Officer
Flight distance : 6754350 ft
Canada
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I was out this morning at -2C.   In 25C weather, I normally get around 18 minutes until the charge gets to 30%.  Today I got about 15 minutes.  The battery does produce it's own heat and is enclosed, so the cold isn't as bad as it could be if the battery was out in the open.   

I have a 3DR hexacopter that I've flown in temps as low as -20C.  Its battery is wide out in the open, slung under the craft.  It didn't make a whole lot of difference.   I'll be flying the Phantom down to -20C
2016-11-11
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Swedrone
Captain
Flight distance : 14066975 ft
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Sweden
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Hello,

I have a lot of experience from flying here in Sweden.

There are 3 issues relating to the cold: Flight battery, iPad (or device) battery and cold fingers
First you need to geet a feel for the real wind temperature both on ground and up in the air by using for instance uavforecast and other weather services. Are you hiking out to the spot or park a car nearby keeping the batteries warm longer? The battery could refuse to start if its below 16C. The flight battery would degrade faster during flight but could also suddely drop very low. The iPad battery must be full but when chilled without some form of cover will suddenly shut of mid air. There are some coves that chills your iPad but I havent´t found a single one that warms it. Guess the market is to small. I tried using a benchmark app running in the background keeping it warm. The last thing is your fingers, very hard to fly in a smooth way with gloves. So I keep full gloves on up until takeof then fly without until my fingers get numb then fly back.
It there is a lot of snow you would also need ND filters to capture thoose lovely winter shots.

Other than that it´s just like any day

Below is -15 C

DJI_0808-3.jpg

2016-11-12
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Snowwolfwarrior
Second Officer
Flight distance : 1064780 ft
United Kingdom
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I was flying the other day and temps were about 3 degrees, I was in sports mode, the P4 was just visible, battery was about 40%  and the app suddenly said low battery and will land in 10 seconds, if I had been in a noisy area and not heard it I may not have had time to cancel the warning and the P4 would have just landed, so be careful when cold and flying in sports mode, it could catch you out
2016-11-13
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OleDrone
lvl.3
Flight distance : 326001 ft

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Hi JR, was yesterday at the Ricken in SG (-2C) and it was beautifull, no issues the Accu was warmed in my appartment before, than I went there and use 3 Accu in a row.
17 min was possible with 35% left in the cells.

this was just quick and dirty recorded to give a first impression, but I hope the next weeks will get more snow and sunny days to make it perfect.
Ole
2016-11-13
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JRodrigues
lvl.1
Flight distance : 181781 ft
Switzerland
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  Hi there,
thank you for all your answers. I flew it 2 days ago in 0°C, flew fine, just had a 1 minute warm up on the ground doing nothing, then I started it, stayed in ground a bit with the motors running, took off and hoovered for another 2 minutes or so and then started flying like usual. No problems, had second battery in my car, worked fine also. Just out of curiosity, last week I saw in a sports store a body warmer, its a small package that you just twist and it heats up... has anyone tried this to maintain the bateries warm? or do you think it just gets to hot?
  Thanks
  Jorge
2016-11-14
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OleDrone
lvl.3
Flight distance : 326001 ft

Switzerland
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Hi Jorge, if this this type https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktivkohlew%C3%A4rmer it will not work perfectly in high altitudes it is better for below 1000m because it needs O2 as reactor.
better would this https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latentw%C3%A4rmespeicher it is re usable and can also work in high altitudes if you are going in the mountains.

but in general take a small cooling box https://www.amazon.de/Kleine-K%C ... ine+k%C3%BChltasche
and you can store it warm during the trip
Gruezi
Ole
2016-11-14
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