Wet drone

[Deleted member 9417]

Treed my drone. Evo II Pro...some flavor. It was in the tree yesterday all day when it also rained all day. Retrieval is first of the week I hope. Anyone have any experience with a soggy drone? Should I just ship it off to Autel, wait for the 6 month turnaround for repair as needed, or is there some I can DYI?

 

[herein2021]

Treed my drone. Evo II Pro...some flavor. It was in the tree yesterday all day when it also rained all day. Retrieval is first of the week I hope. Anyone have any experience with a soggy drone? Should I just ship it off to Autel, wait for the 6 month turnaround for repair as needed, or is there some I can DYI?

I have never had that problem, but I have heard rice works for cell phones, maybe with enough of it it might work for yours. The good news is it was fresh water not salty ocean water and the drone was not powered on when it rained so you must just need to let it dry out for a few weeks then try starting it up, The bigger problem is can you ever really trust it after it has been through that? You might get it flying again, but something inside could corrode and eventually fail at the worst possible time.

 

[Deleted member 9417]

Thanks for your insight It was powered on. But I take your point about potential future glitches.

 

[Detritalgeo]

If the battery died before the rain came it may be in not bad shape and the amount of corrosion would be reduced. Also there is much less dissolved ions in rainwater so there would be much less residue

 

[Tman1265]

I tree'd my Evo a couple years ago and it spent a week at the top of a tree before I was able to get it down. A week in February. In Wisconsin. In snow, ice, sleet, rain, hail, wind, thundersnow, you name it for a week. When I got it down for some reason I impulsively tried to fire it up (the battery never got jarred loose) and it turned on and came to life. I took it home, took the battery out, spread it all out on a towel, turned a fan on it and let it thoroughly dry out for several days. Popped a new battery in it and it popped right off like nothing happened. I could have probably recalibrated everything and called it good and kept flying but I did send it in to have it gone over. They told me that the circuit board still had moisture on it and was starting to show signs of corrosion. So it was not a matter of if it would fail, but when. They sent it back and I sold it "as is buyer beware" for $400 and put that towards a new one.