Humidity Failures?

David Cooke · Jul 13, 2017

Others have talked about loss of range or poor video/optics due to humidity but today I flew in a rural farm area with no known interference sources ( where I have flown many times) and I lost signal almost from the time I took off. Video was choppy but control was fine. Take a look. RED is bad . . purple is WORSE!

It said " Interference in video signal" I assumed this was some "software glitch" when it just as suddenly went away. I was taking off from the side of a road with a low voltage powerline running along the ditch so I moved well away to the other side of the road and it cleared up . . problem solved. . . . but . . minutes later it dropped the video AND the Controller signal and I contemplated the loss of the machine for a few seconds. Hitting RTH a few times it seemed to finally connect and began returning. Virtually the entire trip was at 395ft in full line of sight so signal loss is a mystery.

Anyone experience this? Here's my theory. My basement workshop is cool . . but dry . . and I closed up the cases and drove to the site immediately flew . . about 10-15 min away. The site was hot and VERY moist . . maybe 90+% humidity and when I took the machine out of it's case it was still cool to the touch. I think the cool flight controller boards collected some humidity initially till the insides warmed up from use and that is what interfered with signal stability? . . . anyone got a competing theory?

BCBasher · Jul 13, 2017

I flew in cool peasoup fog on fathers day, had no problems and a 14 minute flight on half a tank in the thick air.

David Cooke · Jul 13, 2017

That's good to know thanks. Wonder if it makes a difference if it was warmed up before flying?

shockwave199 · Jul 13, 2017

It was almost certainly not due to humidity. What firmware are you at and what tablet do you fly with? Be cautious about future flights. Fly conservatively for a while and make sure those glitches are worked out. Sometimes it happens once with no rhyme or reason and clears up. Sometimes not. But humidity alone should not cause those software issues.

David Cooke · Jul 13, 2017

Thanks for the advice . . and will do so for a while . . it's a P4P+ . . with the built in android screen. It makes sense to me that the cool machine brought out of a P4P "Cooler" carrier probably condensed all over immediately and that would definitely not be good for the electronics . . so now I store them (P4P+ and Mavic) upstairs so the temperature difference with the outside is minimal. . . less likely to form condensation for sure. . . I should probably cool it down again and try another flight just to test the theory on the next humid day . . . or NOT!

shockwave199 · Jul 13, 2017

Ok but in my opinion, temperature and humidity is the wrong thing to be considering in this case. Good luck.

John Locke · Jul 13, 2017

When you get an "interference" warning, assuming you're on AUTO, the craft should change channels. This may result in a short drop of video for a moment sometimes, but only a half second usually. You should immediately go to the HD icon settings screen and look at the interference level for the channel you're on. You never know, even in rural areas you may have some arbitrary military stuff going on that's totally invisible to you. If you see no interference showing in the HD screen, then you should consider other possibilities. However humidity, I don't think that's your issue.

Make sure you fly with 5.8Ghz AUTO. It's the least affected from wifi interference, and it will fly the farthest too.

David Cooke · Jul 13, 2017

Thanks John ... makes sense. I always fly on 5Ghz and also I'm ex military so no known ops within 50miles but . . . could well have been some other interference alright... started with video going choppy but then lost everything half mile away... so quite strange. Definitely should have looked at signal screen but I was too distracted and confused on the sudden but intermittent video loss