Rise of the Phoenix
by Jack and Jude 18 Feb 2018 06:47 UTC
Chance in a million to hook it © jackandjude.com
After dragging a grapple across the Mavic's last known position the whole afternoon, on the last cast when nearing dusk, Zeus smiled upon us and the grapple caught and hauled up a slightly muddy bird dripping saltwater.
Back on board, after the battery was removed and the camera gimbal locked, it went straight into a bucket of fresh water, and then sloshed up and down. Changed water, repeated the process, then left the bird submerged in that water for a few hours. Afterwards, shaking Mr Mavic as dry as possible, the aircraft was then hung vertically until next day when the sun came out hot, so we put our poor birdy out on deck for the next 48 hours, turning her over from time to time.
A week later in Strahan, we took a deep breath and fired her up with a new battery; and chuckled with surprise when it came alive in GPS mode, the camera also working but with a foggy lens. Now my blunt fingers aren't quite suited to tiny gizmos but I gave removing the camera a go and managed to remove four of the tiniest watchmaker's screws I'd ever seen, before being confronted by a miniature wiring harness. Frankly another miracle happened, because the camera found a new bill of health and produced sharp images again. Amazing!
Thanks to Ronnie Morrison, we then flew the revived "Phoenix" round and round his mini aerodrome using up several batteries before starting to think that we might have been extraordinarily lucky. But! Seven hours under saltwater? How can it be considered reliable! So we are looking into alternatives, although frankly speaking we don't look forward to forking out another $1500. Perhaps this is a good time to advertise – our video memory stick that now contain a new half dozen Full HD drone flights as extras.
This article has been provided by the courtesy of jackandjude.com