Hey everyone.   Went out fishing the other day and caught a 5 inch!



Ok, I did bit of a clickbait thing there.  I was flying and stupid me thought I could pull some tricks over this reservoir that didn't look too risky.... Of course confidence >>> skill and I ended up crashing my new Flight One Dolphin1 quad into the water, arghhh...


So a few things  I've learned...

• Cheapo HD camera gopro wannabe is not water proof as stated on the box
  
• The pilot is not a good as stated on the box
  
• HV cattle fences are now doing the daul wire thing - so you think it's ok - test the wire with the back of your palm but then you find the OTHER @#$% wire at the bottom.   Add one's body as to close the circuit and bam, mrs screams out louder than my quad!
  

WHAT A DAY!


Thankfully the reservoir wasn't too deep and I got the quad back within a couple of minutes of it going in the drink..




So I have now started the (what I'm sure is going to be a painfull) process of bringing the quad back to life.

I reakon this is going to be a total teardown.  I have had it outside in the sun the last two days to get it nice and dry and in the morning it sits over the ducted heating vent to get that dry airflow going.

I think the HD camera is toast.  I have dissembled it and sure enough there was water on the internals.  I will let it dry for a while before trying it out again.

The quad was covered in all sorts of gunk.   Anyone got any tips when dealing with a submerged quad???

I have the footage of the crash, will upload it shortly...

cheers!

Don't do what dumbarse ph2t does! - here's your lesson for today!

ph2t.

Little water shouldn't hurt a Dolphin...

(sorry, couldn't resist)

That's a badge right there!
I do hope you're able to get it working again and later get back at flying at that reservoir as you want

lol @sloscotty, very true mate!   I'm hoping that as well when it comes to plugin in the power again...

Thanks brnmd!   What a way to earn a badge! lol..

Here's a short vid of the whole mess...



Hopefully it ends up a good news story! 

This is the sort of thing that scares me about flying anywhere near water

Looks like it landed close to the bank so at least you managed to retrieve it farily easily without having to call out the local scuba diving club

Hopefully you'll be able to salvage something from it. I guess the boards aren't conformal coated? I would wash all the electronics thoroughly in 99.9% isopropyl alcohol. You obviously need to try and get rid of as much of the crud as possible to mitigate the possibility of any mineral contaminants causing continuity across circuit board traces or component pins.

Dude you are brave. My Blackout Mini H literally blacked out over a lake at a park and fell right in. In those days, that was a premium build but I still could not get myself to go into that lake. Your lake looks pretty clean but this lake has ducks and birds that live and poop there all day long and I'm thinking Mini H ... hepatitis C ... Mini H ... hepatitis C ... lol.

Try putting it in a large bag of rice..... It works with cell phones right? Should work better for drones in that case... maybe..... Worth a shot I guess. These drones seem to be fairly water resistant to begin with.

So a quick update on this....

I left the quad to dry in the sun for a few days.  I also pulled the action camera apart to let it "breath".

The quad works!   I cleaned off the motors and gave the whole thing a once over with a can of compressed air.

Still runs well.  

So I figured that this quad is now, well sort of, water "aware" so I took it for a fly during a light rain to see how it would perform.  It was quite fun!



In the light rain it works just fine.  I had to land it a couple of times when the lens of the FPV cam became covered in water drops.  

I think there is a great opportunity to get a flying quad that is rain friendly - think of all the parks that would be devoid of people due to the weather! lol...