My Phantom Went R.I.P. in the Ocean Today...

[PhantomFanatic]

I feel your pain. I'm so sorry.

You have one thing wrong. The compass calibration has nothing to do with the home point. The RTH is done via GPS. Compass calibration is needed only when you are flying from a new location. Some do it before every flight and it doesn't hurt anything.

What happened sounds like a low battery problem as the Phantom will then descend and land wherever it is when it reaches that point.

All is not lost. If you haven't done it already, it may be too late, but try it anyway. First, remove the battery. I hope you did that. Then rinse everything several times with fresh water. Do this to the battery too. Get water up into the vents, near the top of the battery.

Then, get all the water out of the battery and your bird. Use paper towels to get as much water off of printed circuit boards, etc. Get a bunch of rice and fill the inside of your Phantom with it, get a big trash bag and immerse the Phantom and battery in a bag full of a heck of a lot of rice! Tie the top of the bag. This way the rice will absorb the humidity in the bag and not from the outside air.

I have saved many electronic items this way. Including a Phantom battery, iphone, etc. I don't know what you have done since the dunking. Time is a factor. But, do this anyway if you haven't done anything yet.

If you can't get it working again, instead of trashing it, try the classifieds here.

Wishing you luck.

 

[PhantomFanatic]

Sorry to hear, and thanks for sharing. I'm sure there's some of us could learn from it. Hopefully things will dry out and as much as possible be salvaged.

Question for all: When you don't have a Vision, can you still use the phone app to monitor the battery? Or is there another way?

Sorry to say that a salt water dip has zero recovery.

The only way on a non vision to monitor the battery is to use a iosd mini. It displays both % and voltage along with tons of other telemetry.

Another thing I do (have evolved!) is an overall risk assessment prior to every flight. If I have elevated risk elements for example, like flying over water, I would use a newer battery and land at 50%. Flying NAZA mode gives that bit of extra control and still in GPS mode if course.

On that note I would encourage others to practice flying in ATTI mode as an exercise once a month, in a safe low risk environment close to home and in light winds just to get a feel for it. So if you lose satellites on a session you will be a little more confident at flicking that switch and bringing it to a happier conclusion.

Not true about salt water immersion. Especially if action is taken ASAP.

 

[John J.]

...First, remove the battery. I hope you did that. Then rinse everything several times with fresh water. Do this to the battery too. Get water up into the vents, near the top of the battery...

First thing we did was remove the battery while still standing on the beach. In preparation of recovering the Phantom I had also grabbed 3 large bottles of fresh water from a nearby fish stand which we used to douse the Phantom. I may be the first Phantom 2 owner to have tried this - and I can assure you - after 2 hours in the ocean, guess what happens when you drench the battery with fresh water? Within about 45 seconds it becomes hot to the touch and begins to smoke! After drenching them, we started to walk back down the beach from where I was flying. My guide was carrying the Phantom 2 and I was carrying the battery. When I started to notice it getting hot in my hand I passed it to the guide to verify, which is when I noticed the smoke coming out of it. We immediately dropped it in the sand and moved some distance away for a few minutes until it cooled down. As far as ricing everything, I was in a fairly remote area, so that didn't happen.

I guess I could post the drowned P2 in the classifieds for parts, the top/bottom shells are in perfect condition. I'll keep the 4 blades, they seem perfectly fine. The H3-3D gimbal came out of the ocean looking a little rusty on one side. The wifi video transmitter I'm not so sure of…meantime thanks for your suggestions and kind words!

- John

 

[Ohary]

Two hours in a salty ocean is going to do damage. I'm sure there are parts you could recover. Maybe list it on ebay with that caveat, flip it and buy a new one. That's what I'd do, lol.

Does the Phantom 2 float? I'm guessing it doesn't, but wonder if it would be easy to find if it did? Maybe pack some styrofoam into the fuselage and maybe it will? I'd been thinking of doing this myself since I often fly over fresh water.

This makes me wonder the life of the battery. If you have 30 hours of flight time on a single battery, that's about 120 flights. I thought I heard somewhere that's about the expected life of a battery?

Also, did you have FPV and ios that showed your battery %? I added a cheap ($25) video recorded to my fpv that records whatever my fpv is showing just in the event I lost my beautiful bird I would have a chance to recover her.

 

[wntofly]

For anyone interested, here's a quick video edit from the footage I was able to salvage once we retrieved my Phantom 2 / GoPro Hero 4 from the ocean in Punta Cana. Really wished the R.I.P. clip wouldn't have been corrupted…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03uLQ9uP-v8

Just an FYI.........I have a couple of times salvaged corrupt video files by using a video conversion software and converting the file to a different format. The particular software was called "Prism video file converter" Downloaded it for free if I remember correctly. Did you happen to save the corrupt file by chance?

Jim

 

[Ohary]

BTW, I handed the controls of my Phantom 1 over to a friend once who, despite his so called R/C experience proceeded to land my P1 into a stream. A neighbor called me the next day and told me where and when he found it. A 10 minute dunk had it saturated. I took the shell off and blew it dry with a leaf blower. It never worked properly until I removed the NAZA, smacked it against the table a couple times to reset it and it flew like new.

 

[syotr]

Does the Phantom 2 float? I'm guessing it doesn't, but wonder if it would be easy to find if it did? Maybe pack some styrofoam into the fuselage and maybe it will? I'd been thinking of doing this myself since I often fly over fresh water.

None of the Phantoms will float. Even if you were to seal up all of the openings in the shell, there is not enough volume to float the weight. You can move the Phantom guts to a new waterproof shell which has more volume.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY8Ukpsh_PI

 

[eyecon82]

This looks like a loss of battery power and auto land at 15 percent. Did you try throttling her up?

 

[Paul K]

John I have one question .
After charging the battery ,did you interrupt flight ( finish one flight ,landed ,removed battery , reinserted battery for second flight)
and used the same battery for second /actualy last flight?

 

[elijahallen]

I feel your pain, I lost a Vision plus to lake michigan this fall, I only had it a week ugh

Hey Elijah,

Sorry to hear, how did it happen?

- John

I was trying to get a shot of a peninsula and was being stupid flying it 800ft in 20mph wind and panicked when I lost site of it and thought I could just rely on it to RTH. If I would have read the manual I would have been able to get it back but in the RTH function it simply ran out of battery before it got back and plunged in about 100 yards off shore! I bought a new one and read the manual very carefully this time haha

 

[John J.]

John I have one question .
After charging the battery ,did you interrupt flight ( finish one flight ,landed ,removed battery , reinserted battery for second flight)
and used the same battery for second /actualy last flight?

Nope. Did everything you said, but inserted fresh battery before second flight.

- John

 

[wkf94025]

Just read your original post. Condolences. Been there, done that. Cabo San Lucas, Sea of Cortez, Mexico, one year ago. Splash landing .mp4 was lost, but I had two days of critical footage on the SD card, and happily paid a $500 reward to the snorkeling instructor who found it same day. P1+H3-2D+Hero3+ were all toast, and have now become my 2yo son's primary bird. ;-)

Separate adventure on New Year's Eve day two weeks ago that nearly ended in tragedy. Whale shark diving in Sea of Cortez. Launched off panga (Mexican 20' outboard skiff), got great footage overhead of whale shark with snorkelers, but P2 inexplicably went into RTH / Autoland. Managed to toggle it out of RTH and back into control, but not without serious pucker factor. Then launched second battery, RTH happened again, and this time no amount of toggling switch regained control. Home point was a couple hundred yards back, as we had been tracking the whale sharks swimming west. Panga driver did some AMAZING driving, and I raced up to the bow just in time to swipe descending Phantom on its way to Davie Jones locker. My entire family heard a long string of profanities from me as I gave up on controller, ripped off goggles, and raced to bow at 20kts to hand catch descending bird. It could have easily ended a lot worse. Tipped panga driver $200.

Flying over water regularly takes cojones and eventually significant cash, one way or another.

Kelly

 

[syotr]

Flying over water regularly takes cojones and eventually significant cash, one way or another.

Kelly

Have you considered a waterproof quad? If you are going to do a lot of flying over water, and considering your past luck, it would seem like a good investment.