FYI - Baby, it's COLD outside!

So I tried pushing the envelope today by flying when the temperature reading showed -12ºC. I know the minimum operating temperature for the Matrice100 shows -10ºC, but I figured I’d try anyway.
NOPE! I suppose the windchill (1.5 meters/second, so not a lot of wind at all) rendered it too much. I was able to complete the 10 second 4 foot hover, but that was it - the warning popped up telliing me the internal battery temperature was not conducive for flight. All I could do was pack up and come back to the office. Oh well, now I can finally get to the camera’s firmware updates I’ve been putting off…

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Oof. Doesn’t sound fun. Stay warm :slight_smile:

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@northarrow
You could point that arrow south and be southarrow for the winter.

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I’ve been flying my Phantom around in temps as low as -15 C without incident or temperature alarms but I warm those batteries up on the dash of the truck real good first !
In flight the batteries generate quite a bit of heat so I don’t expect any loss of performance once the bird is in the air.
I did have some icing on the fuselage and props during one of my higher altitude flights though. That was a bit disconcerting so now I watch the weather a bit more closely.

hmmm. I wonder if it’s a M100 thing, then…
I had the batteries on the floor of the truck in the heater’s blast and waited until the last minute to install them…
I flew a few days later (-5ºC) without incident. Landed just in time, too, as a squall let loose reducing visibility!

I did a flight (P3 Std) a few weeks ago in 20 C / -6 C and got a message batteries too cold. I warmed them up on my truck dashboard and then everything went fine. I’ve since picked up some of those chemical hand warmers, the kind you open the package and expose them to air and they heat up. Haven’t tested yet, but I expect they will work. Also not leaving the batteries in the truck overnight will help (Duh!)