Lately, I've had quite a few people asking me about flying their Phantoms and other multirotors in cold, winter weather conditions. There are manufacturer recommendations, which in the Phantom's case seem rather conservative, but we all understand why manufacturers do this. I think it's important to mention that you're taking on some added risk when choosing to fly in cold conditions, but with additional pre-planning and preparation, it is absolutely doable. I fly regularly for commercial projects throughout the winter months where we seldom see 32°F until Spring in my neck of the woods.
Here's an example of a very recent production done for social media that had a very short window of opportunity over the Holiday week:
This was shot in the early morning - ambient air temp was 10°F with winds at 15-20 mph. It was quite cold! I'll share some thoughts and ideas from my experiences:
Here's an example of a very recent production done for social media that had a very short window of opportunity over the Holiday week:
This was shot in the early morning - ambient air temp was 10°F with winds at 15-20 mph. It was quite cold! I'll share some thoughts and ideas from my experiences:
- Turn ON voltage monitoring in your app to keep an eye on battery voltages. Regardless of what your remaining battery % shows, you should be making your decisions on flight time and landing based upon how your battery is behaving. LiPo batteries do not like cold weather and will discharge faster. Don't push your A/C hard in low temperatures. If you're not used to monitoring your battery voltage, make this a practice as it may save you from disaster.
- Warm your batteries. I keep my truck running throughout a shoot and warm the batteries on the defroster vents, turning them over to evenly spread the heat. DJI offers a battery warmer which does work in a pinch (I have one) but requires about 10 min and uses voltage from the battery to operate. This will also reduce your available flight time.
- Warm your tablet/phone in-between A/C battery changes. Each different tablet or phone will react differently to these conditions - some may not want to operate at all. Your electronics do not like the cold and may begin to misbehave. Anything from losing screen brightness to acting as if the the battery is going dead. I've found that keeping exposure to a minimum is the best bet to keep everything operating as it should.
- Plan and compose your shots ahead of time. This may go without saying, but in the case of cold weather flying or winter conditions, you want to reduce the amount of time you're in the air.
- Take care of yourself! For those that have flown routinely in cold conditions, they will share how awful it can be to try and make precision stick inputs with colder fingers that become stiff from ensuing hypothermia. You need to warm yourself in-between battery changes. The cold air can be the biggest distraction you can imagine. Distractions evoke mistakes and poor judgement - not good things when it comes to aerial photography/videography.
