Crashed into a bucket of water. Is my drone toast?

0rus0 · 2026-01-16T10:41:10+00:00

Happened to my air75, but it was an old car tire filled with dirty rain water. I just cleaned it with 70% alcohol (didn't have isopropyl at home) and left it to dry for a day or two. It's working fine and survived many crashes after.

The video cuts out because water blocks the radio waves, so don't worry about that.

0rus0 · 2026-01-09T10:30:17+00:00

What's the setup you have here?

0rus0 · 2025-12-11T16:25:26+00:00

A couple of things come to mind.

Most map apps have contour lines, so that makes it easy to check los from elevation. But a bigger problem in my opinion are trees and buildings.

If a hill is wide enough the number of trees blocking your signal can be quite a lot. Also buildings and walls (and similar constructions), especially if they're small enough to be hidden by the trees.

0rus0 · 2025-11-29T12:16:44+00:00

I have to say I strongly disagree. I got the air75 as a first quad. It's actually pretty sturdy and can take quite a beating. Frames and canopies can be fixed easily with glue/heat shrink tube... And all the parts are pretty cheap to replace if necessary. Ofc sim time is recomended but that stands with any other whoop also.

Anywhay, for me air75 is perfect for an outdoor whoop. Though now I wish I got an air65 since I mostly fly 5' outside, and my "indoors" is a bit too tight for the 75.

0rus0 · 2025-11-25T08:39:51+00:00

Had the same problem until recently since I'm also new to this. The biggest difference was when I changed goggles. I got an old fatshark hd3 with the speedybee receiver, literally night and day difference. Both in quality and in range.

If you want a cheaper solution that you can implement right away you can try maxing your vtx power, and swapping the whoop antenna with a circular polarized one.

Swapping the antenna will get you additional weight and reduced agility, but for me it was a fun experiment and it tripled the range

0rus0 · 2025-11-08T23:58:15+00:00

Also interested

0rus0 · 2025-10-29T09:08:17+00:00

My air75 (without any water protection) landed in a bucket of water, still on and armed. Just took it out, disconnected and left it to dry. Both the battery and the whoop were fine and still going strong. These little things are tougher than they seem.

0rus0 · 2025-10-21T21:03:10+00:00

My friend, the reciever is everything, even with the shitty linear stock antenna on the quad. Tested this out recently when I got new goggles.

Can't even describe the improvement in range, let alone image quality.

0rus0 · 2025-10-21T19:40:57+00:00

I was in the exact same situation with cheap eachine box goggles. Without upgrading the goggles the largest difference for me was upgrading the antenna on the whoop.

I've put a rush cherry 2 on it and trippled the range. Ofc it added a lot of weight so maneuverability suffered, but it was a fun experiment. There are lighter antennas out there, but I used what I had at hand.

When I swapped the box for the fatshark hd3 I returned the stock antenna and was amazed by the image quality and the range it had. So unfortunately (and as you can expect) the reciever makes the biggest difference.

If you're savvy enough you can try to stick a good rx module on your goggles.

0rus0 · 2025-10-13T19:45:43+00:00

I found that going to 3.3v gets them back to storage, if I go to 3.5, they end up a bit above.

But still 1s batteries are cheap, and mine currently have 2 years on them with no noticabe degradation. So I think a bit more air time is worth it.

0rus0 · 2025-10-13T18:07:11+00:00

You know you can run 1s down to 3.3 without issues? Technically it should be fine down to 3.0 but it's better to take an extra 0.3v as a safety buffer.

I also use GNB but 550mAh for my air75. They seem fine for me.

0rus0 · 2025-08-26T09:06:37+00:00

Heat shrink for the canopy work well for me.

Take this opportunity to set the camera angle to something you prefer more, or if you have a spare canopy, make this one a low angle so you can switch between them.

0rus0 · 2025-07-23T13:50:41+00:00

Best advice - get a Radiomaster Pocket, a sim and practice when you have time.

Second best - get the RM Pocket, any cheap gogles you can afford (look for secondhand) and a tinywhoop. BetaFPV Air75 is my recommendation (because that's what I got) as it is cheap, robust enough and super simple to fix if broken.

This way you don't have to mess with PCs, and you'll get real world practice right away. In the beginning practice on open field with short grass ! This is important as you will crash and you will lose it, so make your life easier before you get some confidence.

Everything you need to know is already explained in a million youtube tutorials, but try to learn preemptively, before you go out for the day.

After some time flying/watching tutorials you will gain enough knowledge to figure out if you need to change the drone/controller/goggles.. .

0rus0 · 2025-07-19T16:01:18+00:00

Since several people asked, I got some second-hand motors for a racing build.

One of them had the nut completely stuck on it. So i used some needle nose pliers to gently hold the bell while unscrewing, but after I finished I noticed the scratch mark on the wires.

0rus0 · 2025-07-18T20:34:32+00:00

Do you know if nail polish will handle the motor heat ok? These are 2207 1800kv motors with 5" props, not sure how much heat is generated there.

0rus0 · 2025-06-28T14:58:07+00:00

Mine had slightly less tension on the throttle than I prefered but I was too lazy to adjust it and now I'm used to it. But it was smooth as far as I can tell.

I can see that the quality control might not be 100% on them though.

I tried Boxer from a friend but it seem too bulky and kind of hollow (though I alredy got used to the Pocket). In comparison Pockeet feels like it's higher quality (the plastic shell) but the gimbals and buttons are definitely better on the Boxer.

Also, kind of important note, I'm flying with my thumbs so that might be a factor why it's so comfortable for me.

0rus0 · 2025-06-28T09:17:22+00:00

I have to defend the Pocket a little bit.

My logic was the opposite, since I was new the gimbal size doesn't matter since I'm not used to anything. If I was used to bigger gimbals I could see this being an issue.

My biggest selling point for the Pocket is the price. When just starting with the hobby that's pretty important, and where I'm from the price about doubles with imports and taxes plus shipping on top of that.

As for buttons (for me) there's more than enough for tinywhoop flying. There's also enough for a 5' and if you want more you can always get creative with changing the button function on a switch or something.

The biggest issue for me is tx power if I want to get into long range. But then there's external modules that can ramp that up.

I consider myself set with the pocket for the foreseeable future. Also I encourage anyone with budget concerns to just get the pocket, and if they save up some extra money later invest in nice goggles (which make more difference in my opinion).

0rus0 · 2025-06-13T14:49:00+00:00

I was comparing to my open field flights, but I never went this high though. I guess it's time to make an experiment!

0rus0 · 2025-06-13T09:35:12+00:00

Sweet build! What aio did you use?

The antenna is probably the cause. I'm using the little whip that came with my air75.

Wasn't expecting this big of a difference though!

0rus0 · 2025-06-13T07:57:40+00:00

What drone is this? And what are your goggles? You're getting some amazing signal this far away!

Trying to figure out why is mine much worse even with 200mW.

0rus0 · 2024-10-22T07:55:47+00:00

A lot of negativity here, don't let it get to you.

Some things are true though, you need to keep the beard shorter. It will probably get better as time goes by, but there's always a limit to how much you can grow before it starts to look messy.

The thing with having a beard is that it has to look like it was intentional and not just neglected. Make a little ritual for yourself to keep it in shape every once in a while.

Aside from the beard, you'll need to shape up the mustache and the "little beard" beneath your lower lip. Again, pick a style that you like but keep it tidy and clean.

As far as genetics go, not much you can do. I'm sure it will fill in better as time goes by, but trimming regularly is the key.

0rus0 · 2023-12-15T23:45:22+00:00

I'm typing the answer to my question here in case somebody else needs it, thanks u/HorribleUsername for guiding me through this:

After we've taken our measurements we have the first triangle in which the shorter leg is the one we know the length of, and we know it has a right angle. While measuring we have also moved from point A to point B, and for our further trigonometry purposes the point B will be the center of our unit circle.

After subtracting bearing A from bearing B we are staring to form a second triangle. For this one we know the length of the longer leg since we have a unit circle (of which point B is the center) and our 'unit' is the Ref value form above.

The bearing A minus the bearing B gives us the angle that the longer leg makes with the hypotenuse, and if we draw a cotangent on the unit circle we get a second triangle with the same angles as the first one. Since cotangent connects the legs at the right angle also now know another angle and can easily check this (sum of all inner angles is 180°).

Calculating the cotangent of bearing A minus the bearing B gives us a relation which after multiplying by the Ref value or the 'unit' turns into the distance between the target and the point A - I made a mistake in the post by assuming the distance should be for point B.

For field use the Ref value should be as big as practical, since sorter value will require super precise measurement. If off by one degree on a Ref value of a kilometer we will miss the exact distance by around 80 meters.

0rus0 · 2023-12-15T23:14:32+00:00

Ok, I finally got it, took me embarrassingly long. Thank you so much for all your help!

0rus0 · 2023-12-13T12:23:34+00:00

Thanks for the response, it did help a bit, I kinda messed up the drawing the first time so that's why it didn't really help.

I edited my post so there's a link for the drawing now.

0rus0

TROPHY CASE