The “Cold”, she can kill you and your devices!!!
OK, we all know it’s winter, well it is if you are in the Northern Hemisphere… And if you live up “here” it can get really cold… My brother who lives in Alaska posted the photo of 36 degrees below on FaceBook, and my son who is down in “warm and balmy” Florida called and said it hit 24 degrees last night, so it does not matter where you are, it can happen to you…
But in most cases I am writing about the Northern Tiers. Besides frostbite, you might lose your drone because the batteries ran down so fast that you could not get it home and it’s out there somewhere making “snow drones” (a droney version of a snow angel…).
But there is another death that your equipment might suffer. Your phone or tablet probably has a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and unless it’s an “extreme temp” variety, it will freeze when the temperature gets below 32 degrees (and I’m not talking Latitude…).
Oh it will not happen all at once, the phone was probably in your pocket and just using it, it puts out a bit of heat, but not enough to overcome the bitter cold during a 30-minute flight and even if it did, did you disconnect the device and warm it while you were changing batteries, probably not…
And if you are flying FPV to catch all that beautiful Winter Wonderland and your device freezes up (Literally!), the screen goes black and it’s not coming back no matter how many times you reboot. And at this point, you had better hope you set your RTH altitude high enough to pass over all those beautiful snow covered trees…
Besides risking the loss of your drone, when the screen freezes up it can cause permanent damage to your device and you may have to replace your screen.
And the bad news is not over yet, if you are flying out in the cold winter air and your screen does not freeze up, you are not necessarily out of the woods yet… When you get back in the house, the device is still cold and humidity can form condensation on your device and on its inner working and that cold also cause an internal short.
To prevent the condensation issues, place your device in a sealable plastic bag until it warms up and no condensation will form on or in it…
I’m sure there are plenty of “war-stories” of folks flying their drones in the Artic and even on Mount Everest without difficulty, I just want to remind you that you should take precautions not to get Frozen out…
And then there are the few who will advocate flying from the front seat of their vehicle so they and their equipment stays nice and toasty warm, but who are you fooling, you are flying FPV and I’m not advocating that where it’s illegal; and if you do, and you get caught, I am sure the judge will be “very understanding” that it was too cold… The judge might even “warm your butt” with a nice fine…
Happy Holidays and Safe Droning!