GPS issues on a ship with radar?

Questions & Answers
1

Hi,
I work offshore on vessels and wonder if my DJI Mavic 2 Pro would have any difficulty connecting to the GPS with the ships radar banging out its signals?? We will all be miles away from land and I want to get some footage of the vessel and surrounding rigs, wind turbines etc but dont want to jeopardise my new purchase.

Thanks,

Paul (Medic)

2

Hi Paul, I’d be more concerned about the huge amount of ferrous metal in the ship messing with the drones onboard compass.

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3

Yes, the compass issues will be my main concern.

I’ve learned that the MP can correct itself after flying it in ATTI mode for a minute or so. Still a risky move.

4

GPS won’t be an issue but, as has been mentioned, steel decks can be, so expect magnetic interference messages.
If you have any substantial plastic/glass-fibre structures (that aren’t steel reinforced, aluminium should be ok) you might be better off launching from that. I’ve used life-jacket storage units in the past.

Hand launching is the other workaround.

Also, very much depending on ship size and sea state, but once the motors are running it can self launch as soon as the deck/whatever-it’s-on descends in the swell. Prepare for a quick launch before this catches you out.
It only goes into a hover, but it will try to maintain a static GPS location, and if the ship is moving you can soon find that it’s flown into something even if only hovering a couple of feet above the deck/whatever.

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5

I flew around an ocean going merchant ship, not very close but as I got a bit lower, the Mavic kept losing video signal, then regaining it, then losing it. I never lost the remote signal, only the video feed to my tabletI could only conclude that the radar was somehow affecting it. I’ve since made sure I was well above any ships I filmed, just to be on the safe side. On a slightly different note, I used to ride my motorbike in company with my wife,who was on her bike, we had radio communication via Bluetooth, when we went past RAF waddington I could here a regular clicking in my headset each time the radar on the air base spun around in our direction.

6

I have flown a couple times near ships have had no problems I have put a quick video together.

7

Marine RADAR systems usually operate on 3GHz (10cm Band) and 10GHz (3cm Band). GPS systems operate on 1575MHz with a bandwidth of 15.35MHz, 1227MHz with a bandwidth of 11MHz, and 1176MHz with a bandwidth of 12.5MHz. So the likelihood of mutual interference is very low.

However flying too close to the RADAR scanner array could be an issue for the drone’s electronics as a whole as the effective radiated power is measured in kilowatts.

The metal superstructure, if taking off from the ship, could be an issue for the drone’s compass. A ship’s conventional compass, the one in the Monkey House, needs to be calibrated against the ships own magnetic field as well as for the variances around the Globe.

Nidge

8

Thank you for taking your time to reply to my question.

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