Hi guys, posting this to hopefully help out others. I was on a job the other day photographing and filming a navel ship with an
Inspire 2 + X5S. Managed to get some good footage of the ship but after about 5 minutes had a warning saying 'magnetic interference, switch to ATTI if aircraft changes behaviour'. The aircraft seemed fine but I switched to ATTI mode anyway just incase. We continued to take photos and then a few minutes later lost full connection of the drone on the iPad and the controller itself. Every failsafe failed. The drone did not return to home and did not make any attempt to land. It went out to sea, probably never to been seen again...
After researching and speaking to various people in the industry, it seems that the radars and satellite dishes on the ship completely fried the insides of the Inspire causing complete loss of connection and control.
In the UK you are required to write an 'Operations Manual' when you apply for your CAA SUA licence. Our Ops manual was roughly around 11,000 words and after writing so much about all the failsafes that are in place if something was to ever go wrong, it was truly terrifying when nothing worked.
I couldn't find much on the internet about flying drones near vessels/ships. So just a word of caution to anyone planning to do something similar in the future.