I was fairly bored this afternoon and took the opportunity to go out and practice flying by the Jubilee River (Windsor Flood Relief). For want of anything better to do I decided to see how high I could go and how close to the river I could get. Just getting everything ready and drone about a foot above the water and I took my eye off it for a second to look at iPad and next thing I knew sounds of props changed and when I looked up it was in the river. I still managed to take it up to 390 feet and back to a foot above the surface. You can see at beginning it in the water and then as it goes up all the water dripping from it. I think I shall call this a ‘learning opportunity’ in the words of Pres Bush!!!
Is there a badge for most lucky learner or turning drone into a submarine?
Always be careful over water, the drone will not maintain a correct height, the water confuses the sensors because they can’t detect it and it thinks it is higher than it actually is and so tends to drop very quickly. You have been incredibly lucky to have spotted it and reacted quickly enough to get up and away from the danger of a dunking
Isn’t it also the case that they have a barometer for altitude measurement which zeros before takeoff. I would think that would control the altitude fine over water, the problem would be if you’re relying on the visual sensors to keep position
It’s the barometer and IMU that are used at all times - GPS altitude being too variable and unreliable … although it does log it.
Always have the downward sensors and auto-land options off when low (below ~2m) over water.
The VPS (the visual and ultrasonic sensors) are easily confused by reflections from the the ripples on on the water and can suddenly, and unexpectedly, initiate auto-land.
Yeah that’s how I thought it worked, autoland over water sounds terrible I’ve been flying quite low over water lately and can’t say I’ve turned those options off, will have to look at the MA settings although I’ve not really been sitting still.
