You never forget the first time you pilot a drone over water.

No matter how well it flies or how good its safety features are, there's still that what-if worry of your expensive quadcopter dunking it into a lake or surf.

So even though the new HoverAir Aqua drone is specifically designed for water, I was still tentative about the implications of a flying camera meeting liquid.

Then I tossed it overboard into the drink.

A drone to capture your epic splashy moments

The HoverAir Aqua is designed to follow you on the water, whether you're surfing, kayaking, paddle boarding or participating in any other activity where you want to capture close action. It can autonomously follow your movements using a variety of modes -- the idea is that you pop it into the air and focus your attention on your activity, leaving the rest to the drone. It doesn't operate underwater, though its camera can record what's going on underneath before it takes flight.

The HoverAir Aqua is priced at $1,299, with one important caveat revealed the day before its release: it's not yet available in the US due to "current US administrative and regulatory complexities." However, the drone can be ordered and shipped to 50 other countries.

The Aqua system consists of two parts -- a drone and a smart target for it to follow. The quadcopter itself weighs 249g, just under the limit for registering it with the FAA, and has two foam guards on each side to provide lightweight buoyancy. The battery takes up most of the top portion, plus a full-color 1.6-inch AMOLED screen where you choose modes and settings and can also review the footage you just captured. A row of buttons below the screen provides access to those features.

The other component is the Lighthouse, a chunky orange transmitter you wear on an arm or leg that gives you limited control and acts as the drone's target for its many follow modes. After the drone and beacon establish a wireless connection, push the main button to launch the copter. Pressing a second button brings it back. While the drone is airborne, there are four directional buttons that nudge it vertically up and down or rotate it left and right.

Naturally, the drone and Lighthouse are waterproof, with an IP-67 rating. You have to make sure a charging port on the bottom of the drone has its silicon plug in place and that the battery is latched securely. This still is, after all, an electronic device that spends most of its time sopping wet.

The Aqua I received came with three batteries, plus two separate dry-bag style waterproof  pouches with dual ziplock-style fasteners to carry the fresh batteries with you (I tucked them into a large pocket of my life vest). A standalone charger, not waterproof, powers up two batteries at a time using a USB-C cable.

The Aqua can also work as a traditional drone through the Hover app on your phone via a special mode that provides virtual controls. That gives you more control over where the camera is pointing and lets you specify a target to follow instead of letting the onboard software make that choice.

And because the camera can rotate 90 degrees to face down, you can record what's happening underwater when the Aqua is bobbing on the surface.

Flying the HoverAir Aqua

To test the Aqua, I went kayaking at a marina near where I live in Seattle. Tossing the drone into the water the first time was indeed a nervous moment, but once it was wet and didn't disappear into the depths, my old anxieties receded.

After a few seconds, the drone and the Lighthouse established a connection and the drone locked in its OmniTerrain mode (which is used for flying over water). Then I pressed the central button on the Lighthouse to launch the copter into the air. It's loud and sputtery, as you would imagine with four small rotors cutting through water.

Both units announce what they're doing using a loud, chipper female voice and several unique audible tones to signal different alerts. When you launch the drone, it provides a 3-second countdown and warns if you're too close. Once the drone is in flight and pointed at you, the Lighthouse tells you when it begins recording video.

One of the neatest features is Turtle Flip: if the drone is upside-down in the water (or if a certain someone in a kayak gleefully tossed it in upside-down), the Aqua automatically flips itself over. That wasn't an issue in the relatively calm waters I was paddling in, but I imagine a moderate surf could easily tip the lightweight drone over. Turtle Flip means you don't have to paddle or swim back to position it.

In fact, the Aqua does a good job of handling most of the work. Other drones require extensive piloting with your hands and attention -- the Aqua, on the other hand, will get into the air and follow you around based on the mode you've selected, leaving you free to do your own thing.

I mostly used Kayak mode, which generally kept me in frame as I paddled, usually from behind. You can choose whether the drone keeps a close, medium or far distance, or specify an exact distance. Hover rates the Aqua at up to 34 mph (55 km/h), which I wasn't able to test in my small kayak.

I also tried other modes, such as Zoom Out, which backs up and away from the subject, Orbit Follow, which has the drone fly in lazy circles, and Spiral, which combines both. There are also modes for SUP (stand-up paddle) and traditional camera angles, such as Dolly Track and Angle Track. Each one has options you configure using the display on the drone, such as whether it should follow you from a high vantage point at a medium distance.

For the most part, using the Aqua was smooth, but I did encounter some chop. To land the drone, you press the RTH (return to home) button on the Lighthouse: it flies near you and then lands after 15 seconds. That also stops recording video. However, numerous times I'd call it back, and it would just hang out in the sky, burning battery power.

As a quick way to end a flight, you can grab the top of the drone and quickly flip it over. But when I was seated at water level in the kayak, the drone was usually just out of my reach.

You also have to keep in mind that the propeller guards are light foam. I broke one while testing in my backyard when it collided with a fence, a reminder that the drone has a sensor pointed down and its camera, but no other way to avoid collisions. Fortunately, it comes with a repair kit that includes a pair of guards and extra props.

I understand that the Lighthouse is designed to be as simple as possible, but I wish there were more controls, like another display and buttons as found on the drone itself. I would have liked the ability to stop and start recording manually instead of waiting for the Lighthouse to announce, like a director, when recording had begun.

It's also important to note that the drone was running prerelease firmware, and a few issues known to Hover's engineers were communicated to me when the drone arrived. That included a tendency for the Aqua and the Lighthouse to frequently disconnect and reconnect "due to fluctuations in signal strength," according to the company, as well as swaying movements in some modes such as Orbit Follow and Dolly Tracking. I experienced all of those issues. I've reached out to the company to ask about when it expects those to be resolved.

Image quality

The Aqua captures 1080p or 4K video at up to 60 frames per second in its normal shooting mode, and up to 100fps in Slo-mo mode. It can also record in H-Log format if you want to do post-process editing in higher quality. The 1/1.28-inch CMOS camera can also capture 12-megapixel still photos in JPEG, DNG or JPEG+DNG formats.

Whether you shoot video, photos or a combination depends on which mode you're in. Kayak mode only shoots video, for instance, but Bird's Eye (which flies straight up with the lens pointed down) gives you the option of shooting a photo, video or both. (I tested only the default video modes for this hands-on experience.)

The Aqua includes 128GB of onboard storage, so you don't have to worry about memory cards. Over my testing, I recorded 19 short videos in 4K resolution (on and away from the water), amounting to about 37 minutes of footage, which took up 15 GB. I'd say that unless you're having an extra-long day of activity and long recorded clips, starting storage is going to be plenty. There's no option to use external memory cards, so if the storage gets tight, you'll need to offload clips to your phone occasionally.

In my limited testing, I can't say this will replicate the kind of choreographed shots you'd get from an experienced drone pilot guiding it separately. You're leaving that kind of control up to the drone itself, and it does a fair job. It's also not entirely smooth in its movements, even in modes other than the ones the company alerted me to, often panning jerkily to re-center me in frame.

As for the video quality, it does a perfectly fine job at the default settings. During the sunny day I was out, it handled turns toward the sun admirably and didn't blow out the sky. The lens is "self-heating, anti-fog and [has] hydrophobic nanocoating," according to the press materials, but some of my clips are smudged by water on the lens, so I think results will vary.

Overall, however, the HoverAir Aqua is noteworthy for what other drones cannot do: play alongside you in the water without worry that a single mistake or mischance would sink your pricey gadget.

Now I just need to remember that when I fly my regular drone, it's not waterproof like this one.