Drone Flights Over Water...things to think about before you do it!
Back in 2014 I conducted one of my first drone flights over the Solent recording one of the biggest hovercrafts built by Griffon Hovercrafts in Southampton. This flight was almost entirely over the Solent and therefore any failure was going to result in the drone landing in the water. While this is the safest place for it to land in the event of a failure, the consequences of such would be that I would have undoubtedly lost all of the footage and all of the photos I had just captured for my client. If you're thinking about making a drone flight over water here are the top three things to think about before you do so.
1 Drone Recovery
What will you do?
Think and plan for the worst case scenario
Firstly straight to the worst case scenario: your drone fails and falls out of the sky! You need to think about how you're going to recover your drone, in my case when doing this work I attached some floats to the undercarriage of my drone. These were DIY floats made out of the common swimming pool toy called a pool ‘noodle’. By attaching noodles to the undercarriage of the drone, it may have looked funny, but I knew that in the worst case scenario the if it was to fallout of the sky it would float and I could ask the hovercraft to recover it along with the footage (hopefully). Since doing that flight there are some newer more modern ways of recovering from an engine or rotor failure such as recovery shoots or floats made specifically for your drone, simply search on Amazon for drone floats and you’ll find something.
2 Drone Radio Failure and Low Battery Actions
No matter how much redudancy you have
it could all still fail
The next bad scenario you could face is a radio failure or perhaps a sudden low battery alert. In this scenario the last thing you want the drone to do is autoland in its current position or simply hover and float in its current position until the battery eventually does run out. Therefore it's very very important that ideally before take off, you confirm all of the correct settings have been put in place this includes ensuring that your home point is in the correct location and that the fail-safe features are set to return to home.
3 Sensors
Garbage in Garbage out
That’s how a sensor works, reflections are the garbage!
Back in 2014 my drone was not equipped with any positioning sensors or crash detection sensors (it only just had GPS) and therefore I did not have to worry about this. But every single drone on the market today has these features and they do not work well with water due to the reflective properties of water. Again, ideally before take off, be sure that you have turned off all of these obstacle sensing and visual positioning systems because false data caused by reflections in the water or mist from boats could easily force your drone to make uncommanded actions such as turns yaws or descents which is the last thing you want.
That’s all, be safe and good luck!