Findings flying Inspire and P3 over open water

Findings flying Inspire and P3 over open water

On several boards across the net there is a discussion going on about severe problems flying the Inspire and the Phantom 3 over open water.

Following along we could not really see a clear statement or result of a test showing whether there are problems in doing so or not. So we went out flying a real world setup using solely DJI Cam Rigs setup the same way they are during our daily operations. We did not change anything. Our normal flight profile for the Phantom 3 Pro has the vision positioning system switched off permanently. For these flights we left it on with the Inspire. One of the picture shows the Inspire 1, the S1000 and the Phantom 3 Pro which took the picture. On top of that we had two more copters in the air. They were positioned in between us and all the copters above water just to make matters worse for the Inspire and the Phantom. We wanted to know whether there are any interference problems between the copters and ourselves.

We flew a few profiles range wise of up to 250m on deck and topping out at around 100m altitude. The profiles included very slow movement just above water, very fast flights, in close proximity to the other copters and further away as well as high altitude patterns.

The results proved a few points we read about on the net but did not with other ones.

Although we flew for an extended period using several batteries, we did not see a single copter disappear into the water lost forever.

In spite of all these copters in the air we did not notice a single rc loss in any of the copter/tx connections.

Especially lining up all copters in front of us and moving them in close proximity to each other there again was no loss of rc signal neither did any copter go into RTH mode coming back.

There was not a single case of RTH during the complete flying period.

We did fly all copters and all profiles in ATTI and GPS mode to see whether this would change anything.

We did notice several complete video transmission losses with the inspire and the phantom while flying close together but only at high altitudes but not on deck just above the water.

When video was lost all copters could be flown normally and the pilot had the map feature and the „radar“ to navigate plus of course the RTH function which would have been available.

Once we extended the range between the two copters video transmission came back and everything went back to normal.

Oh yes and last but not least we managed to film a great sunset.

Having flown these profiles with all DJI copters in the air and above water at the same time for us it seems to be clear, that we do not have to change a whole lot in our settings or procedures during payed jobs, especially when flying just one copter above water. We do have the vision positioning system switched off permanently anyway and use normal caution and our proved procedures when flying over water.

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