Hello
I have seen many videos taken from Moving boats.    I have never done this but would like to try.  Can anyone give me some advice?  Does it matter where you set the home as long as you stay within control limits?   


Scott

The only advise I can give is that you have a much larger percentage chance of losing your quad when you fly over water - no matter what you do. Maybe put some small foam floats on the landing gear so at least you can recover some parts of your quad.

Flying in ATTI mode may be the safest way to avoid possible problems. Of course, if you have much wind that could be difficult.

make sure you know how to set inflight homepoint with the s2 button.  then, take off from boat, go set homepoint over beach or land area, then fly.  that way if you have a problem, the phantom wont go land where the boat WAS (and probably isnt now).  ive tested this, works pretty nice.
not sure i totally understand the aversion to water that is common on the board.  i fly nearly everything at 150-200ft.  from that height, a crash is a loss whether water or land.  ok, well maybe there are a few scenarios that i would land on something softer and not totally destroy, but still.  i live around a lake and spend a lot of time on water, my phantom will to.  but ill take extra precautions to know the things that make it different, but ultimately i dont expect my drone to crash so water doesnt make me nervous.  now if someone meant how water might affect signals (rx or gps) that would actually make me nervous.  but i thought someone in another thread said that wasnt a big deal, dunno.

This is my favourite boat video, but I still won't send him any cash.............

yeah, i saw that, pretty sad.  i dont know why people dont realize that when you take off, you have to account for lateral movement while the physics are all working themselves out.  it just doesnt always go straight up.  not only is that the reason it hits teh boat... sigh... but also, a person could get pretty messed up if those blades hit you instead of the boat standing there 3 ft from launch.  ask my fingers.

I love this This dude shows his second phantom going for a swim in a lake. RTH set in due to low power and he obviously had no clue how to retake controll of it so he instead reversed his boat and didn't get back in time.

He used getterbacks this time and could retrieve it, so this is something you might want to purchase when flying over water. If it's salt water, don't bother. The electonics will get fried instatly.

droneflyers.com Posted at 2015-2-15 22:23
The only advise I can give is that you have a much larger percentage chance of losing your quad when ...

I don't understand why you would have a much greater chance over water???  What exactly would be the reasoning on that?  I fly mine out of my Jon Boat all the time. Works just like it would on land. RTH is the only thing you got to pay attention too. Moving the home point as suggested is a good idea.  Thanks for that.

gary.ok.hotmail Posted at 2015-2-16 02:03
I don't understand why you would have a much greater chance over water???  What exactly would be t ...

The only reason is you usually cannot recover it when it sinks.

gerry, while that is true, i would also think however that 99% of crashes from 100ft or above, what exactly are you recovering?  i mean so you might put together mangled parts of something to piece it all back together but doesnt seem like you'd salvage much.  this reminds me of someone who used to tell me they were more nervous about flying in a plane over water instead of land, when in fact, if you crash in either, your odds of living are only marginally different when comparing to whether or not you even crash to begin with (as in even if your odds are 100x better over land than water, when comparing both of those to the original odds of even crashing, it is not statistically significant).  not exact parallel here but similar, which is why i asked.  

gnixon2015 Posted at 2015-2-16 02:10
gerry, while that is true, i would also think however that 99% of crashes from 100ft or above, what  ...

Lots and lots of pieces.

haha, yes.  lots of pieces not much better than nothing at all.  frankly, if i fell from 200ft and there were 100 pieces, i dont know id want those pieces flying my next investment anyhow.  how would i trust that some electronics part wasnt fouled up and just waiting to fail.  i mean, a fall from 5ft when taking off or landing, thats diff (and i would try and do THAT from away from water whenever i can.... just like that video, TAKING OFF AND LANDING to me is where your water risk is, not flying over it... guess thats what i was actually getting at above... apologize for verbosity...)

Well, the only thing DJI offers is 30 % off a new one.  If you had all the parts and something showed it failed while in flight, and under warranty,  that might just replace all of it. (long shot though)

30% off if you can prove a crash?

HermosaDrones Posted at 2015-2-16 02:33
30% off if you can prove a crash?

if nothing is recoverable, they offer sometimes a 30% off the price of a new one,  if you have recovered the crashed phantom, they might replace the phantom if some piece of equipment failed and caused the crash.

i didnt know that, thanks for sharing gerry.  i think i am going to do like you and buy a used one online and fix it so i can use it for my sandbox...but i promise i wont tell gertrude or heathcliff that one of them is the prodigy and one is not

gary.ok.hotmail Posted at 2015-2-16 02:03
I don't understand why you would have a much greater chance over water???  What exactly would be t ...

Gerry has the reasoning right - but to explain further, most Phantom flyers (I assume) have had some kind of unscheduled landing...even if not a crash. When this happens over water, you generally lose your Phantom.

I have been flying my P1 for well over a year. I had two unscheduled landing (one clipped a tree and one was low battery when quad was far away) and both would have resulted in destruction of the quad if they were over water.

This is precisely why a couple companies developed quads made for use over water - which cost 3 to 7X as much as a Phantom.

Of course, we can't give you percentages but can say - anecdotally - that a lot of folks here report Phantoms which have hit the drink. In fact, one person advertised a FREE P2 if you wanted to dive for it 800 feet off of a Sanibel Florida beach.  Here it is!
http://fortmyers.craigslist.org/lee/ele/4855012909.html

well, if someone flies so far out over water that they cant get back to land safely, that is pilot error and avoidable in my opinion.  if i adjust my flying parameters and become much more vigilant when flying over water, i can overcome most of those fringe statistical issues.  i dont expect to be clipping any trees over water either, in fact, as far as obstacle collision, over water is probably safer than over land when looked at mathematically.  i dont expect to be flying more than a few hundred feet away over water (maybe 200-300) to avoid what you, right so, point out as one of the issues being nowhere to land.  that is certainly a concern but manageable if done properly.

This couldnt happened with a Professional drone:-)

timketels.hotma Posted at 2015-2-16 03:37
This couldnt happened with a Professional drone:-)

That's what they said about Airbus planes......
:-)

I'm going to do close-in flying over water in Florida next month and all summer down here at the New England Coast. But for further out work I'll use my older P1 carrying a GP with a float on it (I have a rowboat which I can retrieve stuff with).

I look forward to the day I can use a follow-me in the sailboat and not worry about losing big bucks...but I fear that is still a couple years off.

So the statement about being more likely to loose the quad over water is soley based on if you crash?  Doesn't make any sense. You are no more likely to crash over water than you are over land. In fact I would argue that it's safer to fly over water. You know what the don't have over water?  That's right trees.  I fly mine over water almost exclusively and I am no more likely to crash than anyone who avoids the water. You could argue that recovery might be less likely if you put it in the water, but that is not what the statement said. I don't want to chase anybody away from flying over the water because it's a lot fun and the video can be awesome.

gary, i agree with you.  i think where i see their point (and maybe it is just necessary to state it very carefully) is that LANDING AND TAKING OFF is more dangerous right around water.  why?  because you dont have the same recovery options (tipovers off a boat result in potentially total loss, tipovers on ground are at worst prop or esc damage).  battery conditions (like how your battery can go from 40% to 20% in a heartbeat if the wind picks up)... those are things that you have to be vigilant about around water.  but if being smart and vigilant, you can certainly overcome the issues and just the fact that you are flying over water isnt the root cause of any issues, just a factor to be very very well managed.

I get what you are saying, I am just not in agreement with that first response.  The concept of "most Phantom Flyers have an unscheduled landing" is pure assumption.  In fact I would argue it the other way.  I am not trying to be a fly in the ointment so to speak, but the guy that started the thread asked for some advice and the first thing he got was basically don't do it, and bad things will happen.  Both not at all true.  There is just as much chance of putting the drone in a lake as there is a tree.  Takeoffs and landings are always a critical, and possibly more challenging around the water, but nothing that can't be dealt with.  So chasing this guy or anybody for that matter away from flying around water based on at best opinion, no facts that I can see, to me is not doing him or anyone else any favors.  I fly mine around and over water all the time.  Always take off from the boat, usually land it back in the boat.  Have never had an unscheduled landing.  Totally something anyone can do, and this does not put you at any additional risk as others have suggested.  

yes, i hear you.  however, i know that droneflyers has been a good contributor around here so sometimes the text comes across differently than natural speech.  i think we are all really just saying that it can lead to issues if not very vigilant, just saying it in diff ways.  i think our back/forth has given the OP what he was looking for.  thanks for the discussion.

My comment is probably spliting hairs, but there might still be some truth in it.

As the signal (2.4GHz for example) hits the water it may reflect off  in unpredictable directions. Even though it is said, that water usually absorbes 2.4 Ghz. But if it doesn't, you could get a multi-path interference. This is when the original signal bounces off  on its way from sender to receiver. Each bounce creates a longer path for that signal. So your Phantom is not receiving one signal, it is getting 2 or more all coming in at slightly different times. The time overlap blurs the original signal to the point where the signal is unintelligible to the receiving transmitter. A flyaway risk??

The phantom has got two antennas. Is this for diversity by the way? This would minimize the risk too. Other than that, I see no reason for it to be more dangerous flying over water. I enjoy doing so.

Don't drink and fly, and you should be safe

markus, that was exactly what my question above was all around.  if the physics of water could have an impact on signals (either the tx/rx signals or the gps signals) then I would want to understand that.  i am thinking that it is not likely or material but i am not enough of an engineer to say definitively one way or another.  of course, gary does it a lot so he has some experiential evidence, but that was what i was more concerned about than actually crashing compared to land.

Hey, be my guest if you want to fly off boats. I have absolutely no problem with it. In fact, all of us (to some degree) are pioneers and only learn the hard way.

No need to do any polling on the matter. If one thinks that the majority of pilots never have unscheduled landings....well, who am I to disagree or talk them out of it?

I use "IMHO" after my statements often because....no one really knows! All I know is that I've read 10's of thousands of pages online on Phantoms for the past 2 years and lots of them mention folks losing them to Neptune! That's not math or statistics...it's anecdote.

Some pilots did mention GPS becoming confused (what they thought caused their water crashes)  - and of course tides in many areas can be the "ground" can vary in height more than dry land....

Here's a quote from a forum member who develops software for the Phantom:

"I, as the others am sorry to hear about you loss but as you where flying over water you introduced a much greater chance of total loss that flying over land.  All electrical components are subject to failure, either a result of a component going bad, failing or mechanical malfunction.  These can be a result of parts (a part failing) or person (something done incorrectly or not well maintained).  Once a fault occurs it becomes a matter of location as to your chances of recovering the device and in the case of an over water failure, unless you added floats (which I have seen some people do) your recovery might need a dive suit."

Now, if anyone wants to set up a real experiment where we take 100 Phantoms out of the box and we fly 50 over water and 50 over land for an equal numbers of hours.....I'll certainly bet cash that more are lost on the water....

Until then we all take our chances. So far I lost only one $50 Hubsan to the bay in Rhode Island.

BTW, here's the boss man of DJI Aerial Imaging - Eric Cheng - on flying over water!
http://makezine.com/magazine/dro ... ter-hits-the-water/

"sending a flying contraption out over water is not without real risk. A crash on land can result in breaking propellers and various parts of an aerial imaging rig, but a crash over water usually means total loss"

"I’m not writing theoretically about the risks. Within a few months of my Steamer Lane video going viral, eight of my friends dunked over 15 multicopters and cameras into various bodies of water"

"Was all of this worth it? Well, everyone here still seems to be in the game, which is a sign that losing an aircraft or four isn’t enough of a deterrent to cause people to give up. Clearly, there is something amazing about aerial perspectives of the ocean."

Of course, Eric gets a great deal on his Phantoms (free)....

and flying them out in the middle of the ocean like rotorpixel's demo videos is not the same as flying them over water at your local lake.  saying they are both 'over water' and equivocating the 'risks' is throwing a dozen other factors out the window in the name of semantics.

as i said in my prior post, if you dont give yourself the right homepoint and you also dont OVER compensate for low batteries, then pilot error is to blame not water.  as i and gary stated, there are plenty of very easy tactics to counter 99% of the risk.  

and he is pretty wrong about land crashes.  as i mentioned before, crashes on TAKEOFF AND LANDING are defn recoverable failures (then again nobody ACTUALLY takes off or lands ON water) so that isnt really a comparison.  but since 99.9999% of the time these things are over land, they dont crash.  it means that 99.9999% of the time they are over water they dont crash.  you know why?  they dont know what they are flying over.  it could be marshmallows and it wouldnt affect crashes.

again, if you HAVE to land and didnt factor all that in above, you are in trouble.  i, for one, feel like i can mitigate most of that to the point that im not LIKELY to have a crash.  is 99.999% worse than 99.9999%.  sure.  is it worth me never flying over water, absolutely not.


now if gunny were to just toon this message for me, id be all set...

gnixon2015 Posted at 2015-2-16 09:40
and flying them out in the middle of the ocean like rotorpixel's demo videos is not the same as flyi ...

Hello
Thanks for all the information.   I have flown over water many times as I live on a lake in NH.   I actually crashed in the water last summer.  Recovered my Quad in 15 feet of water after 10 mins or so.   I removed the battery and disassembled the whole quad including every connector.  Used compressed air and waited a week.  Reassembled and it runs fine, even the battery that went in with it.   I think had this been salt water it would have been done.   

I have just never tried flying from a moving platform such as a car either.  Lots of good comments here .  Hopefully I will have some video to share.   

Scott

I meant to mention my first water crash happened I think due to being in a hurry on set up and takeoff.   I was feeling really good about my skills,  I believe the battery was not fully seated.   I flew normal and about 250 feet up or so early in the flight started circling in about 20 foot diameter circle.   I was on the trying to bring it down, so I may have added to the crash.  It went faster and faster then crash into the water.   I did find that battery not seated well.   

Scott

and ill bet over land it would have taken way more than compressed air and a week to make it 'work again'... more evidence that if you dont crash, water and land are moot, and if you do crash, it is either your fault or there are totally valid cases where each is better/worse/same as the other.  again, moral of this story is vigilance can be the best weapon flying over water.

Hello
Can someone let me know how to set home point in flight.  there is a mention of S2 but I am not sure what or where that is.  I am going to attempt take off from a boat that will move and so I am nervous about the RTH feature.  I want to make sure that Phantom will return to boats new position and not original take off.  I have switched on smart RTH but I don't know what else to do.

Does it make any sense on the RTH function to change to hover instead of land so that if it does RTH at least it will not go into water until it runs out of battery and I have some time to get back to that point?