Flew my Neo over water today

[i own a neo]

Went better than I thought

 

[RcHawks]

I own three, lol. Welcome to the forum!
BTW was you flying RC2 or other controller?

 

[i own a neo]

Flying with Mobile controls on a iPad. The big screen is Much better

 

[i own a neo]

Also using a cpl filter

 

[i own a neo]

Again perfect

 

[Chrislaf]

Flying with Mobile controls on a iPad. The big screen is Much better

NEO flies just like any other DJI drone over water but if you are using a mobile device for control you need to be careful especially over water. If you loose connection to the device the NEO will just hover in place until the battery is depleted and then land. Over water, that spells disaster if you can't move closer to re-establish connection. I have also found that the stated range you can fly with a mobile device is much less than the specs state in most cases.

Chris

 

[spacewizard]

Again perfect

Lovely!

Also brave

 

[i own a neo]

NEO flies just like any other DJI drone over water but if you are using a mobile device for control you need to be careful especially over water. If you loose connection to the device the NEO will just hover in place until the battery is depleted and then land. Over water, that spells disaster if you can't move closer to re-establish connection. I have also found that the stated range you can fly with a mobile device is much less than the specs state in most cases.

Chris

It does hover if you lose connection, but I didn’t fly far into the water. I was also following the drone through the water, and I had to be extra careful because it was quite windy.

 

[i own a neo]

Lovely!

Also brave

Took a lot of bravery

 

[DarR-T]

No issues. I fly over water all the time. In fact, it's the only place I fly.

 

[Christian]

I flew all my drones above the local river. It means hundreds of KMs and nothing happened. I don´t understand this panik...

 

[spacewizard]

Well, Neos do have a tendency to freak out and start wandering randomly, and DJI tell you not to fly them over water. Put those two together and you get caution about flying over water.

I had a Neo freak out and fly across a river and crash on the other side in somebody's yard. I don't think it was over the river when the freakout happened but it makes me pretty cautious about flying the neo anywhere I couldn't easily retrieve it, when lighting conditions aren't ideal.

 

[DarR-T]

I believe a low altitude combined with glassy water may affect the aircraft sensors negatively.

 

[scanny]

My NEO freaked out when I tried to make it do "rocket" from my canoe. I was hoping it would be looking at the canoe, not at the water, but i was wrong. Drone went up just fine, but when it started to descend it lost me and was just hovering. I have connected with phone before I started "rocket" and phone was still connected but drone didn't react on controls. After awhile it went sideways and thankfully hit something on the shore and dropped in the water. I paddled to the direction it fell and I saw my drone floating on that orange propeller guards. When I got to the drone it started sinking, but it was about knee deep, so I got my drone, disconnected battery , shaken off the water and left in on the sun. It worked fine after day on the sun, but my lesson is that if I ever try to start it from canoe again I'll do it with RC2 controller in manual mode when it has it full GPS connection. And probably minimum 10 m from the water.

 

[Chrislaf]

Well, Neos do have a tendency to freak out and start wandering randomly, and DJI tell you not to fly them over water. Put those two together and you get caution about flying over water.

I had a Neo freak out and fly across a river and crash on the other side in somebody's yard. I don't think it was over the river when the freakout happened but it makes me pretty cautious about flying the neo anywhere I couldn't easily retrieve it, when lighting conditions aren't ideal.

A similar incident happened to me shortly after I got my NEO last fall. I was using the RC-N3 controller and was more than 10m above a beaver pond and suddenly the NEO shot off toward the trees on the side of the pond. I was able to get control of it and fly it back safely before it hit the tree branches and fell in the water but it startled me as I have flown my other drones in that exact same location numerous times without incident.

Chris

 

[Chrislaf]

My NEO freaked out when I tried to make it do "rocket" from my canoe. I was hoping it would be looking at the canoe, not at the water, but i was wrong. Drone went up just fine, but when it started to descend it lost me and was just hovering. I have connected with phone before I started "rocket" and phone was still connected but drone didn't react on controls. After awhile it went sideways and thankfully hit something on the shore and dropped in the water. I paddled to the direction it fell and I saw my drone floating on that orange propeller guards. When I got to the drone it started sinking, but it was about knee deep, so I got my drone, disconnected battery , shaken off the water and left in on the sun. It worked fine after day on the sun, but my lesson is that if I ever try to start it from canoe again I'll do it with RC2 controller in manual mode when it has it full GPS connection. And probably minimum 10 m from the water.

When the weather cools down a bit I am going to go out on my kayak and have the NEO follow me, but I will use my RC-N3 controller and iphone so that I don't run into any connection problems with the phone only method. I will also likely bring my small fishing net just in case it doesn't want to land. I learned my lesson with my Spark I had a few years ago - it didn't want to land in my hand because the kayak kept drifting a bit.

Chris

 

[RcHawks]

I almost had a Spark for my first drone. I went to Best Buy and there were none in store. So I had them look it up on their website for me and they had 1 left. When I went to pay at the counter I made a mistake on the payment information. Great, entered the information again and it was too late. Someone else snatched up on it. Man, I was so disappointed. When the Mavic Mini came out I bought that for my first drone. I think I like the neo much better than the mm to tell you the truth.
I've got to say your workouts are impressive! Very good hobbies to have for physical health and being able to log everything with neo videos makes it even better!

 

[Chrislaf]

I almost had a Spark for my first drone. I went to Best Buy and there were none in store. So I had them look it up on their website for me and they had 1 left. When I went to pay at the counter I made a mistake on the payment information. Great, entered the information again and it was too late. Someone else snatched up on it. Man, I was so disappointed. When the Mavic Mini came out I bought that for my first drone. I think I like the neo much better than the mm to tell you the truth.
I've got to say your workouts are impressive! Very good hobbies to have for physical health and being able to log everything with neo videos makes it even better!

Yeah, the Spark was one of my favourite drones - fully featured but the only downside was the short battery life similar to the NEO.

Thanks for the kind comments about my NEO tracking videos. Most of my drone flying other than light painting is done by hiking out to a location and the NEO is the perfect drone to document the hike, bike, ski or snowshoe.

Chris

 

[Poverty Flyer]

The only time I have Neo control issues is in low light conditions mostly indoors.
Over water in daylight I fly about 20ft over water surface.
Keeping the bottom sensors clean can help. Every time you land dust can fly up and cover the lens / sensor. I mostly use the rcn3

I wouldn't trust going over water without a gps enabled controller.
No real need to fly FPV over water.

Just my opinion and practice.

Cheers

 

[scanny]

When the weather cools down a bit I am going to go out on my kayak and have the NEO follow me, but I will use my RC-N3 controller and iphone so that I don't run into any connection problems with the phone only method. I will also likely bring my small fishing net just in case it doesn't want to land. I learned my lesson with my Spark I had a few years ago - it didn't want to land in my hand because the kayak kept drifting a bit.

Chris

I think follow mode might work better, with rocket it totally lost me and I didn't blame it after I saw the video, this is when NEO was supposed to descent back to me:

. Lake looked too much as a mirror. I should note that STARTRC floating propeller guard saved my NEO, it kept it afloat enough time for me to paddle to the direction of it approximate landing location and orange color helped me to spot my drone. It started sinking shortly after I came basically next to it. What interesting is that log showed that NEO instead of going down after reaching 10m "rocket" height climbed at 30m and reached maximum speed 86.5 km/h when it headed to the shore. I'm not sure how to believe it, but airdata.com log analyzer showed that max speed, visually NEO went very fast after if stopped the video - I saw only general direction of its flight I didn't see where exactly it landed. I think it fell into water after it hit a tree branches - there was no scratches or any marks and if it hit water at the speed I don't think floating propeller guards would help it.