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Pull the battery out of the drone and set it aside somewhere safe and fireproof because lithium batteries can become unstable when damaged and often burst into flames. Also, the more time that your drone has power applied to it, the more damage will be done.
Great! Now, let’s get on with our article.
So, your drone has crashed into a body of water; a lake, the ocean, a swimming pool perhaps. The type of water does matter. You probably weren’t given a choice, but landing in fresh water is way better than landing in salt water. Salt water is highly corrosive and electrically conductive, so the chances for every kind of harm are a lot higher if you land in the ocean than if you land in a lake.
Let’s talk about the major components and the potential risk:
- Main Board and Circuitry
Water is electrically conductive (salt water extremely so). So dipping your drone into water is like creating a thousand little short circuits all over the circuit boards. Sometimes you get lucky and nothing bad happens. Sometimes you blow up some circuitry (the motor speed controllers are extremely vulnerable since they are high-power circuits). - Motors
Modern brushless motors, like those on DJI drones, have almost no moving parts. There’s just a single bearing which, if properly cleaned up, might be just fine. - Gimbal Assembly
The gimbal assembly has a couple of key rotating parts, including variable resistors which provide feedback on how far the motors have rotated the arms. The number one enemy here is corrosion. If you got it out of the water quickly enough (and got the salt off of it by rinsing in alcohol) you might be ok. - Camera
Depending on how deep your drone sinks, and how long it stays, water can force its way into the camera and cause condensation on the lens and the sensor. This could mean that you’ll need a new camera. - Battery
The safest thing to do with the battery if it gets more than a quick dunk is to send it to your local electronics disposal center. A battery failure often includes a fire and sometimes an explosion. Having this happen in flight is especially bad.
Next Steps
Once the battery is removed, the next step is to stop the corrosive action of the water and any salts in it. We recommend rinsing the drone in isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) that you buy at the drug store. Isopropyl alcohol is rather inert chemically and it absorbs water, so everywhere it gets in your drone you will be replacing something bad (water) with something less bad (alcohol).
Next, you need to get the alcohol and remaining water out. This involves disassembling the case and removing the flight controller from its enclosure (if that’s how your drone is built). Then everything goes in a warm dry place, with circulating air, not over 110 F.
While you have it disassembled, you also need to check for mechanical damage. Hitting water hard can be almost as bad as hitting the ground. Also, many water landings are really secondary crashes, having hit a tree or something else first.
Spin the motors by hand to make sure that they rotate freely. Do the same with the gimbal components.
When everything is nice and dry, and no longer smells like alcohol, you can put it back together.
Power-on Test
Get a fresh (uncrashed) battery and insert it. Press the power switch but be ready to yank out the battery the moment you notice anything unusual (smoke, funny smell, weird behavior, heat, strange sounds). If anything out of the ordinary happens, don’t go any further; you could wind up doing a lot more damage. Send it to a professional for repair. They have better equipment and have seen a lot of crashed drones than you have.
If that’s all good, then let it power up and check it out with your controller to make sure there are no error conditions. Make sure that the camera gimbal rotates properly. This is now your first chance to see the picture from the camera. Do you have a picture at all? Is it nice and clear? Or foggy?
Next go through the IMU calibration procedure to make sure that the flight computer is still working properly. Then do a compass calibration.
If you have a Mavic Pro or Phantom 4, also do the obstacle avoidance calibration just to make sure that those cameras were not damaged. Issues with this system can cause sudden altitude drops, which can cause you to crash into things.
If everything checks out, then you are ready for a simple test flight. Low altitude hover, check for stability. Check each control to make sure that all 8 positions (left, right, etc.) work as expected.
What Next
If you got this far and everything is working, you’re pretty lucky. Just be careful to fly your drone very conservatively over the next few flights to make super extra sure that there isn’t some latent damage that’s going to cause it to drop out of the sky.
Hope this helps, and happy flying!
Was in Pismo, on the third battery, coming home it must of fell out drone into the water. Battery was 10 feet from drone. 5 hrs later read this article, will try alcohol if it’s not to late. Gimble is full of sand..
Might need your help.
Joe
So sorry to hear about your accident. Unfortunately, salt water is super destructive.
Please let us know if we can help.
Any news? Did you salvage it?
Wow! I had always thought once it went under, it was done! I didn’t know about the alcohol, that is an amazingly good idea! I use it in the gas tank of my car every year to mix with the water to get rid of the water. Now I’ll have a quart or two sitting here ready to go!
I now have you on the top of the list for repairs I can’t handle. I have also bookmarked your website for this info if I ever forget what to do!
Thanks so much! We’re really glad we could help.
Very detailed and all sounds reasonable wherever you land your drone bring isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol).
I put my bebop 2 drone down in a lake,it was 10 feet down for 8 min. After I swam out there I just got it above water and pulled the battery as fast as I could,poured alcohol on some key spots,put it in front of a space heater and fan,it was working again no problems 24 hrs later.
That’s awesome! The later model drones have been more and more resilient to water-damage lately, which has been great to see more drones return to the air 🙂 I’m glad to hear yours was up and running in almost no time. Happy flying!
just had a fresh water crash today. Drone was submerged for about 5 minutes. I pulled it up and it was still on. I immediately removed the battery and drove the 10 minutes home and disassembled the drone completely. I dried everything off and then reassembled. I didnt know anything about the alchohol at the time of the crash. So, now my drone powers on, calibrates and the camera works (including the gimbal), but one of the front motors does not turn. It gets warm, but nothing happens. Any ideas? Could it possibly be that i didnt put it back together correctly or could something be burnt out?
So sorry to hear about your drone. What model is it? Most often with water-damage, a motor could be affected by corrosion to the brushless motor. If you rotate it by hand, it could be that it does not move as freely as the others due to this, or due to a physical obstruction. We could also take a look as well as see what it needs. If so, reach out to us at [email protected] and we would be happy to see what is going on.
Hello. I have the first Mavic Pro model. I hit a tree causing a propeller to break sending the drone flying into the creek i was standing next to. I pulled it out in under 2 or 3 seconds toweled it off and went strait into a large bag of jasmine rice. This was about 1 hour ago. At this point should I just leave the rice to work it’s magic or should I pull it out and do the alcohol thing? Thanks.
So sorry to hear about your drone. At this point, either way could probably go just fine, especially since it landed in freshwater rather than salt. We found that the Mavic Pros are actually pretty resilient against water-damage compared to the other models. Keep in the rice for now, and see how it looks in a week or two.
Thanks so much. I feel a little better now knowing there is some hope.
Drone landed atop an 80 ft tree. Went through pretty heavy rains before being blown onto the ground. What kind of water damage could we be facing
First of all, ouch! So sorry to hear about your drone incident.
If you must have a water incident, this is one of the better scenarios to have. In the first place, rain water is relatively non-conductive and free of the salts that are so corrosive to electronics. Secondly, being splashed with water (even a lot of it) is quite a bit different from actually being submerged in it, so you got off a bit easier there. And lastly, it sounds like the drone crashed, ran out of battery, and THEN got rained on. So your drone wasn’t actually on when it got wet.
All three of these factors played in your favor, so your damage may well be minimal. The key to successful recovery, as we said, is prompt action.
Of course, the type of drone also matters. If you fly a DJI Mavic Pro, you might actually get off without any significant damage. The Mavic Pro has a conformal coating on the circuit boards which goes a long way towards eliminating casual water damage.
Best of luck to you and happy flying!
Hope your drone pulls through! Mine crashed on my roof and got rained on before we got it down. The batteries were dead. I may just let it sit a few days then try a fresh battery. Not sure I need to go through rinsing it with alcohol. Would that help in my situation?
Rinsing with 90% isopropyl alcohol helps it dry.
Best wishes!
Hi. I have a Skydio 2 and it was splashed by an ocean wave (salt water). The drone was splashed from behind and after playing the video I could see the water droplets (splash) in front of the drone. it seems fine and the lens doesn’t appear to have any water spots, but there were a few white salt water marks on top of the drone that I wiped off. Should I be concerned with any salt water going into the motors or anywhere else? Any suggestions as I want to ensure that I stop/prevent any corrosion from occurring. Thanks.
Seems like you might have gotten off very lucky.
If the drone is dry, you’re probably ok. Brush off any salt anywhere you see it because it is hygroscopic (pulls water out of the air).
Best regards, –Rick
New to flying a drone. Wanted to get some good video over a lake I fish at. I lost the drone in the sunlight, and was bringing it down to where I could hear it. Unfortunately, the signal was bad in the area, and the video was skipping. Long story short, it disappeared. I turned around to pout the remote down and go wading in, and it popped back up out of the water. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Had an error “Lost connection to drone” on my app, no video, but was able to sight fly it back, and the land slider still functioned. It has been drying out for three days. I crashed it into fresh water, so I am hoping after I let it dry a bit more, it will be good to go. Is a Phantom 3, standard.
Wishing you good luck! Let us know how it goes.
mine crashed into a lake (fresh water) about a year ago. I’ve been able to fly it since then and everything works fine except the vps system. I can hear the bottom sensors transmitting (clicking) but the system isn’t detecting anything. On the app (while connected to the controller and drone) it says the Vision System is normal. I tried calibrating through the assistant 2 software system and every time I try it says please reboot the aircraft and doesn’t allow me to get on the calibration page. Any ideas?
Yikes! Sorry to hear about your drone. Typically when there is no image, the main core board has some corrosion either on the board, or on the connector where the core cables connect. Since this happened a year ago, you might see if removing the bottom cover and cleaning off the board of any corrosion may help. If it’s too far gone, it may need a replacement core board. We’ve certainly seen our fair share of these.
OK my Mavic pro took a swim in a fountain about 4 days ago .. I got it out and swooped the batt and the drone took back to the air so I got it home and put it into rice for 72hrs .Everything looked good but the lens still has condensation on it . I took out the 6 screws and tried to take the lens off but it won’t come off !!! I got on you tube to see if there was any other way I should be taking it off and it looks like they had the same problem as me and cut the video away and then when the video came back on they seemed to get lens off real easy hmm (WHAT DID THEY DO) to make it look easy to take the lens off ???? HELP PLEASE !!!!# Going Crazy P.S Should I cleans the hole drone with rubbing alcohol including the lens ?? will that help get any water out and or off the lens. Thanks” Welz aka SLINGSHOT #slingshot Circus81 {you tube}
My Phantom 3 landed in a pond today. It’s still there, under water. I want the footage more than the drone…I’m assuming repair will cost the value of the drone (a drone that was already showing it’s age). Do you think the micro-sd will be shot? I don’t want to go through to work to get the drone if I lost the machine and the footage. Any advice is appreciated!
Hi. So sorry to hear about your water landing.
Very likely the SD card is still good. The problem is that the data written to it is likely incomplete.
Recording video digitally isn’t like tape; images are not written in real-time. While you are recording video, the images are stored in internal memory and only periodically dumped to the SD card. Then video file is only written and closed properly when you press the STOP button, or when the data exceeds 4Gb. (You may have noticed that long flights are recorded in multiple files because 4Gb is the maximum that can be stored in a single file.) If the drone loses power before writing the data, then last file will be incomplete and corrupt. (The drone will attempt to complete the store operation when power is restored. In the event of a water landing, that last data segment is likely not retrievable. )
So, short answer, probably the SD card has everything except the last 15 minutes or so of flight time (depending on your camera resolution settings, etc.)
Hope this helps. Good luck, whatever you decide.