Awesome new cameras, but how do you land these things safely on a sailboat? It's always tricky and scary.
I was sailing in Croatia (on sails) and we’ve spotted some dolphins. So I launched a Mavic Air to observe them from closer. Soon the wind picked up and so did the waves. I piloted the drone back to the boat and planned to catch it in my hand, but I haven’t felt comfortable doing so, since the boat moved like crazy, while the drone was static in the air. Don’t forget to imagine the million ropes and wires in the air, which is just the reality of being on a sailboat. Wind howling, captain shouting orders, drone’s proximity and low battery alarms loudly screaming.
I had to do something, so I hovered above the bow net and killed the motors. It fell into the net and didn’t damage its propellers/gimbal.
edit: 2.5MB dolphin video: https://files.catbox.moe/98n85f.mp4
But now: how are you going to do it, when you are holding the drone in one hand, remote in another and do a command with both sticks? Don't you need a third hand for that? The answer is no. You need a lanyard for your remote. That way, you can use one hand for holding the drone and the other for pushing the sticks.
I've flown from boats a handful of times, and it's stressful. When I started, I would ask them to keep the boat as still as possible, hover next to the boat, then slowly move over to me so I could reach it. Grab it from underneath and flip it over to kill the motors.
That's obviously not safe, and it's not hard to find photos in drone groups of people's hands after a failed attempt to do exactly this. It's not pretty.
After that I came across an old indoor practice goal for soccer players - basically a net on a stand. I modified it to lay flat and started using it. I'd get the quad close to the boat, hover a couple of feet over the net, and kill the motors. It worked, but felt like I was risking my quad dropping into the ocean every time I did it.
These days I've gone back to hand-catching, but with a vertical grip that I mounted under the aircraft. I 3D printed a "harness" of sorts that fits around the fuselage and has a Picatinny rail on the bottom (like on a rifle). I picked up a cheap vertical grip designed for a gun that I can quickly mount on the rail - it extends ~6" below and gives me something to grab without being on the same plane as the props. It works well enough, but isn't perfect. It would interfere with the field of view on something with a 360º camera gimbal (like an Inspire), and has a significant impact on flight time and performance even though I did all I could to reduce the weight.
One of the tips is to turn off RTH though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MsDUQjn9Bk
Funny enough I was telling my buddy about the video. And he mentioned he had some youtuber go fishing with him and bragging about some drone he had. He didnt turn off RTH and it went in the drink when the batteries ran down.
It's more that you just have to remember to update the home point, and if you don't the drone will suddenly fly off far way out to open water, and if you're not playing it safe you could then run out of battery before you can fly back.
This stuff is annoying, but anyone being responsible and making sure they budget plenty of reserve power ends up being fine.
I'm most familiar with Autel's system, since that's what I fly 99% of the time. It has the option to update your home point, but it also has two modes: RTH to takeoff point, and RTH to the controller.
RTH = "Return To Home"
The problem with all of the above is the "failsafe". If the quad loses connection to the controller, by default it will return to the takeoff point and land. You can set it up to RTH to either the the takeoff point or the last known position of the controller, then land or hover until connection is re-established.
On a boat, you're constantly moving. If you lose connection, the drone immediately loses the current position of the controller, so you have to turn the boat around, manually find the drone, and cross your fingers that you're able to reconnect to it before the batteries die and it descends into a nice, slow, controlled landing in the middle of the ocean.
Identifying alternate safe landing sites before taking off is part of the pre-flight checklist for any flight, but it's especially important when operating over water. Doubly so if you're taking off from a boat. Whenever possible, I make sure to end my flights with enough battery that I can make it back to land if I have to. I've planned to use (inactive) oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in an emergency. I have no idea how I would have gotten ahold of the owners and gotten access to it to retrieve my drone if I'd had to use it, but I'd rather work out those details later than lose it or be forced to ditch it in the water.
At least with my DJI the "home point" is the trick. As the boat moves you move, but the home point is/was fixed at a GPS location, not a radio location.
So you have to stay on top of updating the home point (which requires menu digging) or the drone eventually freaks out and tries to fly away back to where the boat's route started, which could be a great way to lose the drone.
In the end for me the DJI's level of software nanny plus sketchy china issues have kind of sealed the deal that next time I won't buy a DJI. There are a lot of places that I can legally fly in a responsible manner that DJI's nanny software basically stops or makes extremely inconvenient. On top of places where a low altitude flight would be allowed and they completely block it, their "unlock" process in other warning type areas has been so buggy I've had many times I can't fly even though it's legal because their system isn't working right.
Being able to completely disable RTH (maybe you can?) and or make the home point auto-update to the transmitter location instead of a fixed GPS location would be a lot better.
I believe so.
I've not flown a DJI "seriously" in a couple of years, but my Autels can be set to stop and hover at a given altitude if connection is lost. I'm pretty sure I remember DJI having the same option.