DJI Mavic Air 2 lightweight water landing kit by hudja

Last crawled date: 3 years, 4 months ago

This is a water landing kit for DJI Mavic Air 2. My goal was to make it as light as possible to not overstress the motors and minimize the impact on flight characteristics.
The kit uses a 6cm thick pool noodle for water aerobics as a float (please contact me if you need a design for thicker noodle). I suggest at least 20cm long pieces, I tested 20cm and 24cm ones.
You will also need a money rubber band, I used 5mm thick with a 10cm diameter.
The kit is very easy to assemble and disassemble. You do not need to take it off to replace the battery. To assemble, connect the base to the wings, attach to the drone, and then insert the floats.
The wings (legs) are aligned with MA2 center of gravity, but please test the balance on water after cutting your floats to find the correct positioning and mark it with a waterproof marker.
I suggest using this kit only in case of an emergency. There is plenty of information on the internet about water landing dangers – make your own research, I take no responsibility here, use at your own risk!
Print with ABS or PETG. DO NOT USE PLA. Mavic's baseplate goes hot and will deform PLA!!! Print a little bit hotter than usual and make sure you have a good wall/infill adhesion to make it mechanically strong.
As of print settings, I wanted to minimize the weight and stress to the motors, I printed with PETG:
wings – 0.4mm wall thickness, 15% rectilinear infill, 2 walls, 4 top/bottom solid layers
base – 0.4mm wall thickness, 35% grid infill, 3 walls, 4 top/bottom solid layers
The weights I achieved are:
42 grams for base and wings only
66 grams with 20 cm long floats attached
72 grams with 24 cm long floats attached
For comparison, the only other commercially available kit I found on Amazon weights 161 grams! I suggest not to make very dense infill or print too many walls as it will make kit too heavy. It will stress the motors and you will lose maneuverability. Please check the temperature of your motors after a test flight.
Supports are needed only for the cut-out in the wings. Do not put supports into the wing's hole where base inserts, it will be impossible to remove.
I tested it multiple times and it does not affect flight characteristics much. More photos and video to come later...