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Flying in the winter

Joined
Aug 13, 2016
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Age
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Are we able to fly the our TH in the winter time? Just wanting to know before the winter season.
 
I presume it would be similar to the Q500 which I have flown many times during the winter even during snowfall. The limiting factor turned out to be my fingers. You can't use gloves to fly because if you need to use the touchscreen you need bare skin. I keep the batteries in an inside pocket on my parka. I think the coldest I flew was at night when it was around 17 F and wind was around 15. Hands froze in about 12 minutes. After that I flew from inside my side-by-side which has a heated cab and that worked great.
 
I presume it would be similar to the Q500 which I have flown many times during the winter even during snowfall. The limiting factor turned out to be my fingers. You can't use gloves to fly because if you need to use the touchscreen you need bare skin. I keep the batteries in an inside pocket on my parka. I think the coldest I flew was at night when it was around 17 F and wind was around 15. Hands froze in about 12 minutes. After that I flew from inside my side-by-side which has a heated cab and that worked great.

And Lipo battery's suck in winter :(
 
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Only if they get to cold. Keeping them warm until the last minute helps a great deal. During flight they do generate their own heat so the flight time is longer than I expected.

Ah cool, well i am basing it on Photography and Video work which does not generate heat - so hopefully the H will rock in the winter but I am not expecting miracles I only get about 15 minutes now in the 98 degree weather :) I am shooting 1920 x 1080 30 fps and my flight time SUCKS!
 
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Ah cool, well i am basing it on Photography and Video work which does not generate heat - so hopefully the H will rock in the winter but I am not expecting miracles I only get about 15 minutes now in the 98 degree weather :) I am shooting 1920 x 1080 30 fps and my flight time SUCKS!
Hmmm.......do you have only one battery? Sounds pretty short to me. I run video from launch to landing at 4K although I rarely fly past 18 minutes.
 
Hey Steve, I agree it is short!
No, I have 3 batteries, which makes no difference on the performance get out of one!
So in the winter I will get less performance.. I probably need a good charger, all I have right now is the stock Yuneec H charger
 
Well......on the upside.......the H flies pretty fast back to home (if you don't use RTH) and the boot time with the new firmware is fast so changing bats is a bit less time consuming. The thing that takes me the most time is getting the camera settings back to what I need. I hate no saved settings.
 
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Well......on the upside.......the H flies pretty fast back to home (if you don't use RTH) and the boot time with the new firmware is fast so changing bats is a bit less time consuming. The thing that takes me the most time is getting the camera settings back to what I need. I hate no saved settings.

so you do not let the H cool down between flights?
 
There have been videos posted on Youtube of a Typhoon H flying in fairly heavy snow in Australia.

You're going to want to keep the batteries warm as much as possible before your flight. The discharging will generate some internal heat, but not enough for optimum performance.
 
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Keep unused batteries in a warm car and flight time doesn't get hit too hard. You won't have as much time as in warmer weather but you'll have enough. I've flown a Chroma a lot during snowfall. It's pretty fun but as mentioned by others, fingers get real cold, real fast. Nice thing about snow, it's usually dry until it hits something warm so your aircraft doesn't get wet like one might think it would. The H should do fine.
 
Here I am working in Iceland a few months ago, batteries and everything else worked flawlessly...the light air canceled out the cold effect on batteries and I got pretty much the same flight times as normal weather.
I catch landed in the snowy conditions and always carry rags to keep things dry...the ST16 could do ten flights without needing to recharge the battery.
Me YuneecHm1_DSC6321.jpg
 
Here I am working in Iceland a few months ago, batteries and everything else worked flawlessly...the light air canceled out the cold effect on batteries and I got pretty much the same flight times as normal weather.
I catch landed in the snowy conditions and always carry rags to keep things dry...the ST16 could do ten flights without needing to recharge the battery.
View attachment 2570
Awesome!!! Do you have any videos from that location on Youtube?
 

I DON'T DO YOUTUBE, This November I return to Iceland for two months to continue producing something on climate change I've been working on for 3 years and another piece about South East Iceland.
Fantastic place to work and film. Looked at some of your other videos as well. I live very close to Copper Falls. Thanks for posting. BTW, how is the new lens working?
 
Well......on the upside.......the H flies pretty fast back to home (if you don't use RTH) and the boot time with the new firmware is fast so changing bats is a bit less time consuming. The thing that takes me the most time is getting the camera settings back to what I need. I hate no saved settings.

I take it you you have the standard software installed because with the EU version the start up time is still slow even after the update,gps is much faster but the wifi can still take well over a minute to connect,which is a lot when you have a window.
 
Fantastic place to work and film. Looked at some of your other videos as well. I live very close to Copper Falls. Thanks for posting. BTW, how is the new lens working?
Re: Lenses...I've got 3 H's and 5 cameras one of them being a "Pro" H which I've not flown yet because it's motor arms would not lock properly it has just been sent back to me from Yuneec repaired. I've tried a variety of lenses and I'm awaiting yet another which is soon to be released...before I go to Iceland I'll make a determination on which lenses to use...I'm concentrating my testing efforts on mapping not lenses right now so that I can save CCC flights and create 3D (2.5D) topographical maps and return years from now to areas I'm photographing and shooting video of pertaining to climate change.
 
I presume it would be similar to the Q500 which I have flown many times during the winter even during snowfall. The limiting factor turned out to be my fingers. You can't use gloves to fly because if you need to use the touchscreen you need bare skin. I keep the batteries in an inside pocket on my parka. I think the coldest I flew was at night when it was around 17 F and wind was around 15. Hands froze in about 12 minutes. After that I flew from inside my side-by-side which has a heated cab and that worked great.

Thanks for the response.
 
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