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- Dec 3, 2016
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Before you run out the door with your quad in winter, you should understand how condensation works. The temperature drop between our homes or cars and the outside air can cause a considerable amount of moisture, inside your ac, despite your best efforts to keep it dry. An ac could be fully functional inside your home, and have a catastrophic failure, immediately after going outside, due to unseen condensation.
Warmer air has the ability to hold much more moisture than cold air. Relative humidity defines the percentage of moisture the air contains, compared to the amount it could possibly contain. As warm air cools, it's relative humidity rises, lowering the amount of moisture it can hold. So, the warm air inside your drone can hold plenty of moisture, without releasing it into the atmosphere. However, as it cools, it loses the ability to hold the moisture and it is released, in the form of condensation, deposited into your IMU, for example. This can wreak havoc on electronics, especially something as sophisticated as a phantom.
So, as you're unpacking your bird, it's filled with warm air(most likely). The warm air contains a certain amount of humidity, and it doesn't hurt anything. When you take it outside in winter, the air rapidly cools and it loses its ability to hold the moisture in the form of humidity. Its then deposited as water into your bird.
The same could happen in reverse for a hot summer day. When the bird comes out of the hot sun and into an air conditioned environment, the condensation may form. The difference would be that you're done flying.
Avoiding massive temperature drops before flight may save you a large repair bill, or worse. A solution might be to slowly adjust the ac to the different temperature, but avoiding it altogether may be the best idea. I thought I'd contribute something helpful, after my last thread went off the rails. Im here to contribute to the community, after all. If I got it wrong, let me know. If you have a good idea, chime in and sorry if you already knew all this. Thanks for reading.
Warmer air has the ability to hold much more moisture than cold air. Relative humidity defines the percentage of moisture the air contains, compared to the amount it could possibly contain. As warm air cools, it's relative humidity rises, lowering the amount of moisture it can hold. So, the warm air inside your drone can hold plenty of moisture, without releasing it into the atmosphere. However, as it cools, it loses the ability to hold the moisture and it is released, in the form of condensation, deposited into your IMU, for example. This can wreak havoc on electronics, especially something as sophisticated as a phantom.
So, as you're unpacking your bird, it's filled with warm air(most likely). The warm air contains a certain amount of humidity, and it doesn't hurt anything. When you take it outside in winter, the air rapidly cools and it loses its ability to hold the moisture in the form of humidity. Its then deposited as water into your bird.
The same could happen in reverse for a hot summer day. When the bird comes out of the hot sun and into an air conditioned environment, the condensation may form. The difference would be that you're done flying.
Avoiding massive temperature drops before flight may save you a large repair bill, or worse. A solution might be to slowly adjust the ac to the different temperature, but avoiding it altogether may be the best idea. I thought I'd contribute something helpful, after my last thread went off the rails. Im here to contribute to the community, after all. If I got it wrong, let me know. If you have a good idea, chime in and sorry if you already knew all this. Thanks for reading.
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