Hi all,
Just returned from a trip to the Puerto Vallarta area of Mexico and took the Anafi with me. No problems concerning the Anafi with customs or immigration. Except for one incident, the Anafi performed extremely well. Took about 3 hours of video over 11 flights. People who commented to me about the drone were impressed by its quiet performance. One person even asked me if I had some type of noise canceling setup with the drone! Anyway, videos came out very nice and I am very happy with the quality of the 4k.
However, I had one mishap at a beach in a town called Sayulita. Was taking off from a deck like platform on the beach to take some video of the town. I did my usual visual check of the Anafi and nothing seemed amiss. Made sure I had good connections and I had over 20 satellites. Everything was a go. Pressed the launch button, the Anafi took off and then within a second or two, I heard this deeper sound coming from the Anafi that I never heard before. The Anafi started to tilt and continued to rise, with no input from me. Given the noise, I suspected it was either a motor or the props. As it got higher, It started to tilt even more, almost to the point of going turtle on me. My biggest concern was controlling the Anafi and getting it back on the ground without landing in the Pacific Ocean just 25 feet away. Stick inputs were erratic. I finally pushed the landing button and down it came. Like a goof ball, tried to catch it but it was almost coming down sideways so I missed. Landed in the sand - the good - relatively soft landing, the bad, sand all over the Anafi. One of the props on the rear leg was completely gone (it was on when I took off 12 seconds before), so that was the problem. Must have sheared off on take off. Probably a small crack that couldn't take the torque of the sudden spinning. Below is the short video of the crash.
Took about an hour to gently and completely clean off the sand from the Anafi and also replace the prop. Did a thorough inspection of the remaining props and decided to replace one other one as their might have been a hairline crack near the connection point to the motor. Lesson learned - I am going to to a more thorough inspection of the props on a regular basis. I am even thinking of replacing the props at regular intervals - maybe every 100 to 150 flights - I had 122 flights when this happened.
After cleaning the Anafi and replacing the prop, all was well and the Anafi continued to perform well, but I just wonder if I would have been able to control the Anafi if the prop disintegrated later in the flight over water or a heavily vegetated area. Lucky it did not!
Here is the short video:
Just returned from a trip to the Puerto Vallarta area of Mexico and took the Anafi with me. No problems concerning the Anafi with customs or immigration. Except for one incident, the Anafi performed extremely well. Took about 3 hours of video over 11 flights. People who commented to me about the drone were impressed by its quiet performance. One person even asked me if I had some type of noise canceling setup with the drone! Anyway, videos came out very nice and I am very happy with the quality of the 4k.
However, I had one mishap at a beach in a town called Sayulita. Was taking off from a deck like platform on the beach to take some video of the town. I did my usual visual check of the Anafi and nothing seemed amiss. Made sure I had good connections and I had over 20 satellites. Everything was a go. Pressed the launch button, the Anafi took off and then within a second or two, I heard this deeper sound coming from the Anafi that I never heard before. The Anafi started to tilt and continued to rise, with no input from me. Given the noise, I suspected it was either a motor or the props. As it got higher, It started to tilt even more, almost to the point of going turtle on me. My biggest concern was controlling the Anafi and getting it back on the ground without landing in the Pacific Ocean just 25 feet away. Stick inputs were erratic. I finally pushed the landing button and down it came. Like a goof ball, tried to catch it but it was almost coming down sideways so I missed. Landed in the sand - the good - relatively soft landing, the bad, sand all over the Anafi. One of the props on the rear leg was completely gone (it was on when I took off 12 seconds before), so that was the problem. Must have sheared off on take off. Probably a small crack that couldn't take the torque of the sudden spinning. Below is the short video of the crash.
Took about an hour to gently and completely clean off the sand from the Anafi and also replace the prop. Did a thorough inspection of the remaining props and decided to replace one other one as their might have been a hairline crack near the connection point to the motor. Lesson learned - I am going to to a more thorough inspection of the props on a regular basis. I am even thinking of replacing the props at regular intervals - maybe every 100 to 150 flights - I had 122 flights when this happened.
After cleaning the Anafi and replacing the prop, all was well and the Anafi continued to perform well, but I just wonder if I would have been able to control the Anafi if the prop disintegrated later in the flight over water or a heavily vegetated area. Lucky it did not!
Here is the short video:
