Baron’s Hobbies – Online Hobby Magazine

Drying Out Electronics After Exposure To the Elements

Posted on December 25, 2011 by aaronredbaron

After finally getting my FPV twinstar flying great with the GoPro2 feeding the video and the Eagle Tree OSD providing full Return To Home Autopilot functions, I crashed it straight into the top of a huge Oak tree. Thanks to a buddy who’s a certified tree climber and arborist, I got everything back in the best condition I could have hoped for, but not before everything was exposed to the elements overnight. It did rain overnight, and I am hopeful the gear will come through this situation without releasing the magic smoke. I thought I’d show you, my readers, what I’m doing to dry out the electronics so you can hopefully save your gear too some day. This is going to be an experiment which I’ll document as it goes, I’ve just put all my goodies up to dry out, and I won’t know if any of it works for a day or two.

Rice is naturally absorbent and works very nicely to dry out electronics. I’ve enjoyed flying models off water since I was little and I’ve run into my fair share of wet electronics situations. I learned I could get pretty much any water dunked radio back into working condition by sealing it up in a container with uncooked rice. My hope is all the goodies that were in my FPV Twinstar will come back to life after an overnight venture in a mason jar with rice.

Here is the video of the crash, I should have stopped flying after I hit the first tree because of the poor lighting, but in the end I’m just happy to have it all back. At least I recorded the crash in high speed mode so I could do the slow-mo!