I live in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s raining or drizzling more often than not, and always damp and humid. Come winter, I’ll also be flying in the snow with limited battery life.

Anyhow, tonight was a bit more of a torrential rain than our usual drizzle. Enough water was falling that all I had to do to wet my soldering sponge was to hold it outside for a few seconds.

I learned a very important (and in hindsight obvious) lesson after a few flights tonight.

While I always use liberal amounts of conformal coating on exposed components (FC, esc, etc) to waterproof them- I also *need* to use conformal coating on the bits that I use heat shrink tubing on (vtx, rx).

…because it’s got an open end on each side of the tube. And moisture and water can get in there.

Yup. I dunno if I killed the vtx on the quad yet, I’m not gonna power it up again until it’s dried off and I’ve checked it for shorts, but I can tell you that completely losing video at 60+ mph sucks.

The funny(?) thing is, about 30 seconds prior to crashing, while pulling a tight turn, I thought, “did I hot glue the exposed ends of the heat shrink on my vtx? It sure would suck if I lost video while going full speed at a solid object right before I started a turn.”

That’s all. I just wanted to share what I learned tonight.

I’ve also decided that if I’m flying in the rain, it’s probably a good idea to take off my goggles and set down my transmitter before I step out into the rain to retrieve my quad after a crash.

Perhaps its best to avoid flying in the rain and/or damp wet conditions.

I am not completely convinced we can keep our quads water resistant enough to avoid damaging components from flying in the rain.

Even if you don't worry about the quad, the flight through a wet camera lens and reduced 5.8GHz reception due to the moisture/water droplets may not make it a pleasant FPV experience.

I never fly in the rain and try to avoid flying in damp conditions if at all possible. It's not good for the electronics in general even if they're conformal coated so I personally don't consider it worth the risk. Unless the whole quad is sealed against water ingress then there will still be exposed contacts somewhere, and the motors will always be open to the elements no matter what, which means that over time any trapped water will start to corrode the magnets. And unless you properly seal the battery then water will get into that too and you really don't want that happening on a LiPo.

I'm in the UK which is generally known for miserable weather a lot of the year round. My quads pretty much go into hibernation during the 3-4 month winter period so during that time I find other things to do rather than flying and just hope that we get some decent weekends to fly during the summer months.

Yeah, the main takeaway here is don’t fly in the rain. Also, don’t buy any used electronics from someone named LemonyLeprosy, because they will have been flown in the rain.

I hear you on the rain. I used to be a dare devil on a litre bike for over a decade in South East Asia where it was wet/humid pretty much all year long and literally rained for hours non stop during the rainy season. My bike was the only way to get through the traffic and there were some close calls.

Adelaide is much drier but its not perfect all year round and I always need to check the forecast for wind and rain the night before I plan on flying.

How about flying indoors when it’s raining all day? Tiny whoops?

I’ve got tiny whoops that I can fly around my shop, and they’re fun, but it’s not quite the same as open air freedom.

I’m not super precious with my stuff, but I’m not what I would consider reckless either (anymore- the speeds I used to lane split on my bike on freeways in Los Angeles make me wonder how I’m still alive).

I enjoy flying, even in the rain. However, yesterday was a much stronger downpour than I usually fly in and it exposed a weak point in my waterproofing/water-resistancing. Fresh rain water on its own is a poor conductor- I have a feeling it had more to do with the water on the ground and on the grass, in the tree and in the bush that I crashed into on the previous flights.

Anyhow, I’ve got a number of vtx & rx to unwrap, conformal coat, and then reheat shrink. Hooray for a new project!

I have never tried flying in rain. Although this guy flies his through the barrels of waves at the beach, no idea how he has waterproofed his build so well:

(04-Nov-2021, 10:29 PM)MrSolo Wrote: I have never tried flying in rain. Although this guy flies his through the barrels of waves at the beach, no idea how he has waterproofed his build so well:

Waterproofed or not, I wouldn’t fly through saltwater. He’s much braver than I.