Drone Use While Underway

[AllenRbrts]

Originally Posted by BigNut

Morning Allen

Great reading your thoughts. The GPS wait is a good point. I almost lost our Spark in the Vivorillo Cays the other day.
When retrieving at sea, do you fly and retrieve on your own, or does it take both of you?
Cheers
BigNut on NAT

Sorry I didn't answer your question. I always use a helper time get the drone back in board when underway.

[pufferfish]

I have got a Mavic Air. Makes fantastic footage and is easy to fly on land, but was a steep learning curve on the Water with several near misses. I now just crash land it into a bath towel (in sports mode which disables the proximity sensors), and reserve 50%of battery power for the landing attempts - with my beginners skills it usually requires several attempts before I dare coming closer than 3m to the intended crash landing zone.
Catching it on a moving boat seems to require far more dexterity and skill that I have - I need at least one hand to hang onto the boat.

Wish the Spry would have been available when I bought my Mavic Air...

[chook]

I have a Mavic Pro and in good conditions I can land it on the swimming platform. The shots are amazing and everywhere we go we use it. Expensive but unreal footage.

I did have a day when after taking off the wind and waves picked up, my wife had never caught the drone and I really buggered it up. Didn't lose the drone but if I had of known to turn the drone upside down after catching it, would have helped alot. I will add the video, footage at 5 min 40 sec.

Good luck with the purchase and practice on land first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVmqV5qilHo&t=1s

[BigNut]

Originally Posted by AllenRbrts

Sorry I didn't answer your question. I always use a helper time get the drone back in board when underway.

Thanks.

About 15”, depending on conditions.

Hehe, you missed the name. NAT. (Hint: Thanks for getting the mooring line to Jeff J2)

BigNut

[BigNut]

Originally Posted by chook

turn the drone upside down after catching it, would have helped alot.

You only have to turn it to 90*. In the Spark, anyway.

[Franziska]

Same on the Air.

[VBsail]

I have a buddy that flies a mavic pro from my boat pretty frequently. We practiced motoring and then sailing on calm days to get the hang of it, landing is still tricky. If I had a boat without backstays I think it would be much easier. We grab and flip it same as my bebop.

For the boat I bought a parrot bebop 2. They are about $250 with controller and battery on ebay. You can hand launch it by tossing it into the air behind the boat. Top speed is about 40mph, battery last about 20-25 minutes and it does GPS follow me as you are sailing. Spare batteries are about $30 and charge from a 12v balance charger off the boat batteries. The camera is not as good as the mavic and it doesn't fold, but for the price I am happy with it.

[Kerryf]

I have a swellpro spry. Its a pretty rugged little unit. The controller is waterproof too so its good for use in the dinghy or paddleboard whatever. The drone locks onto the controller so "return to home" goes to the controller not where it took off from. It has "follow me" mode and also can fly around the controller while pointing the camera at it all the time. The height and radius of the circle are variable.
All in all a good unit . Not as good resolution as some of the non waterproof models but it will last a lot longer.

[aeronautic1]

... all the time while on yacht delivery. I use a Magic Pro with the landing sensor disabled for hand recovery

[Aquasition]

Awesome discussion and tips here! And those videos... wow.

I wanted to bring up something that unless I missed didn't seem to get discussed at all but I think is relevant: The legality, in the US (and possibly elsewhere), of flying a drone from a boat that is underway.

A friend of mine has a small DJI drone and is licensed (FAA) to fly it in the US as one must be. According to what we've learned, relevant to this discussion, part of the rules say you're not supposed to launch from a "moving target". We've pondered if my boat was considered a moving target only while underway, or even while at anchor or on a mooring, since one could argue in each case it is "moving." To be honest, that's really the main reason I haven't bought one yet...

Anyone have any thoughts and experience on this aspect? Also, I have no idea what the non-US rules are, but I'm curious as to how they differ from the US, if they even exist...

[GrowleyMonster]

I bought one of those palm sized micro drones at Best Buy for $49.95 on sale... that type is VERY TRICKY to fly. I found to my consternation that they have an propensity to make unscheduled water landings at my marina. After the fourth one I decided to forget about drones until I could set aside a bigger budget for an easier to fly model.


That was of course my original intent, to fly the drone over the boat for God's eye view pics, and I will eventually do that, yeah.


Good to hear that there are now floating and water resistant drones out there. It is sad to watch one plunk into the water.... knowing after observing the first three, that it will never come back up to the surface no matter how hard you wish it or press the controller joystick. If I had one that could survive a water landing, things would be different.

[aeronautic1]

Here is a drone video I produced as a thank you gift to the yacht owners for hiring me to deliver their yacht to Green Bay Wi.

https://www.outerreefyachts.com/vide...-FOUR-PLEASURE

[NevilleCat]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

If you have superhuman skill....

https://youtu.be/c09f2HIULiI

That is SERIOUSLY AWESOME!

[Peio64]

Originally Posted by SailFastTri

I have a Mavic Pro, which I bought after returning a Mavic Air. The MA doesn't have enough flight time or speed to be good for keeping up with a sailing boat. The MP has 50% more speed and 40% more flight time. (I figure you need to leave at least half of your flight time for landing, because it can be challenging while moving and surrounded by rigging.) These drones can be set to Return To Home using the GPS position of the controller, but neither the MA or MP can be counted on to auto-land on a moving platform (not even a drifting one) and if you lose communication the RTH is the last known controller position.
For all of these reasons and risks, I have yet to fly my drone while under sail. Would welcome tips or tricks from other fliers.

I also own a Mavic Pro and also two Phantom 3 A. I never had the guts to launch them from my boat but I own a ketch with rigging everywhere. I think that the main difficulty is take off since these drones are designed to hover perfectly in place before they are not high enough for moving forward or backward. If you launch them from a boat underway, the best thus would be to do it from the rear provided this place is clear from rigging or any obstacle such as solar pannels, davits etc. This is not the case in my ketch ! Further, I wonder how they manage when taking off from a plateform which is not more or less horizontal and stable in level.

Concerning your second point, "home" is not the last known controler position but the position of the take off point unless you set it to "dynamic". In this case, "home" is regularly updated at the actual position of the drone. When your aim is to follow a sailing boat this is better for RTH than setting failsafe to "hover", but this is not perfect. As a Litchi app user, I see an other solution which is the "follow" mode of this app. Its advantage over active track mode is that it creates a tether to the GPS module present in a device (phone) which can be different from the device used for flying. It is therefore not reliant on lighting conditions and can work at larger distances than active track provided you are under the limits of wifi transmission. But with this mode, you make sure that your drone will always follow the boat like if it had a leach...

[AllenRbrts]

Originally Posted by BigNut

Thanks.

About 15”, depending on conditions.

Hehe, you missed the name. NAT. (Hint: Thanks for getting the mooring line to Jeff J2)

BigNut

I did miss the NAT [emoji1] .