DJI Mavic 3 Pro

I've got hundreds of hours flying quadcopters at this point, and the only times I've ever wanted prop guards on a photo drone have been for flying indoors or very near hot air balloons.

I've flown from boats a handful of times, and it's stressful. When I started, I would ask them to keep the boat as still as possible, hover next to the boat, then slowly move over to me so I could reach it. Grab it from underneath and flip it over to kill the motors.

That's obviously not safe, and it's not hard to find photos in drone groups of people's hands after a failed attempt to do exactly this. It's not pretty.

After that I came across an old indoor practice goal for soccer players - basically a net on a stand. I modified it to lay flat and started using it. I'd get the quad close to the boat, hover a couple of feet over the net, and kill the motors. It worked, but felt like I was risking my quad dropping into the ocean every time I did it.

These days I've gone back to hand-catching, but with a vertical grip that I mounted under the aircraft. I 3D printed a "harness" of sorts that fits around the fuselage and has a Picatinny rail on the bottom (like on a rifle). I picked up a cheap vertical grip designed for a gun that I can quickly mount on the rail - it extends ~6" below and gives me something to grab without being on the same plane as the props. It works well enough, but isn't perfect. It would interfere with the field of view on something with a 360º camera gimbal (like an Inspire), and has a significant impact on flight time and performance even though I did all I could to reduce the weight.

I'm most familiar with Autel's system, since that's what I fly 99% of the time. It has the option to update your home point, but it also has two modes: RTH to takeoff point, and RTH to the controller.

RTH = "Return To Home"

The problem with all of the above is the "failsafe". If the quad loses connection to the controller, by default it will return to the takeoff point and land. You can set it up to RTH to either the the takeoff point or the last known position of the controller, then land or hover until connection is re-established.

On a boat, you're constantly moving. If you lose connection, the drone immediately loses the current position of the controller, so you have to turn the boat around, manually find the drone, and cross your fingers that you're able to reconnect to it before the batteries die and it descends into a nice, slow, controlled landing in the middle of the ocean.

Identifying alternate safe landing sites before taking off is part of the pre-flight checklist for any flight, but it's especially important when operating over water. Doubly so if you're taking off from a boat. Whenever possible, I make sure to end my flights with enough battery that I can make it back to land if I have to. I've planned to use (inactive) oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in an emergency. I have no idea how I would have gotten ahold of the owners and gotten access to it to retrieve my drone if I'd had to use it, but I'd rather work out those details later than lose it or be forced to ditch it in the water.