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Anafi engine cut off during commercial flight - Help!

Andag2

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Hello everybody,

It is nice to be part of this forum and apologies for the dramatic title of my first post. I am a content creator and my main tools for photography and videography are a Fuji xt2 and my Parrot Anafi. I am currently on a trip in LatAm creating travel content for a project I am working on.

Yesterday I tried flying my Parrot Anafi at the Rainbow mountain in Peru. Let me mention at this point that my Anafi has never had any issues flying prior to yesterday's events. First time I tried to fly, I attempted a hand launch and was surprised to see the drone propellers stopping and the Anafi falling back to my hand. I tried a second time: the Anafi flew for a few seconds and then I got an error on Freeflight 6 reading "engines cut off", which I had never seen before. Anafi fell but from only 1 meter. I decided to try one last time, as I needed the content for my job.

The Anafi took off normally and I ascended to around 30 meters. Then I observed it was not obeying my commands so I tried to land but I could not make it in time. The engine cut off once more and the drone fell from around 20 meters. I am not sure whether my Anafi still works, it landed on soil but it fell from high altitude. I am devastated with what happened and baffled, as I have no idea what caused this behaviour. Worst thing? The Freeflight app has not recorded the error, as when I tried to locate it, it says "engine errors: 0".

I did some research after the above incidents and saw that drones can have a hard time flying at high elevation. My attempted flight was at 5000m, so I believe it is considered as quite high. Nevertheless, I did not see any warnings on the Freeflight app before or during my flight other than the "engines cut off" error when the Anafi fell. The weather was pretty good and all the equipment (hardware - software) was in excellent condition and ready to fly (also according to FreeFlight 6).

Based on the above, could you please shed some light on the below. Any advice would be very appreciated:

1/ why do you think my Anafi's engine cut off causing the crash?
2/ how can I provide evidence to Parrot of the drone's faulty behaviour given the errors were not recorded on Freeflight? Is there any way to access an incident log and retrieve information on these flights and the errors?
3/ do you think Parrot may not cover any required fixes under the warranty due to the high elevation of the flight? There was no altitude warning in the app and I do not remember reading in any Parrot materials that Anafi is unable to fly at high elevation like this.
4/ If the drone seems okay Freeflight 6 shows it is good to fly, should I keep flying or get it checked for the engine errors and any damages from the crash first? I need aerial content for my project but not sure what to do after yesterday's events.

Thanks for taking the time to read.
Andy
 
First of all, contact Parrot support. Do as you did in your text: explain what happened and then ask the same questions. Then report back here.
 
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There have been a few posts about hand launches that have failed lately. One post mentions rebooting the Anafi after the failed launch. If you don't it will fail again. Perhaps a firmware glitch 2327

I'm not a big fan of the hand launch option and will not use it. If you need it for your job I see no reason not to do a controlled launch from the ground to see if it will fly and everything works OK. All Parrot is going to tell you is to send it in and then you will be without it any ways. So if it powers up fine and flies fine I say go for it.
If you can get by without it then wait till Parrot gets back to you.
 
Hello everybody,

It is nice to be part of this forum and apologies for the dramatic title of my first post. I am a content creator and my main tools for photography and videography are a Fuji xt2 and my Parrot Anafi. I am currently on a trip in LatAm creating travel content for a project I am working on.

Yesterday I tried flying my Parrot Anafi at the Rainbow mountain in Peru. Let me mention at this point that my Anafi has never had any issues flying prior to yesterday's events. First time I tried to fly, I attempted a hand launch and was surprised to see the drone propellers stopping and the Anafi falling back to my hand. I tried a second time: the Anafi flew for a few seconds and then I got an error on Freeflight 6 reading "engines cut off", which I had never seen before. Anafi fell but from only 1 meter. I decided to try one last time, as I needed the content for my job.

The Anafi took off normally and I ascended to around 30 meters. Then I observed it was not obeying my commands so I tried to land but I could not make it in time. The engine cut off once more and the drone fell from around 20 meters. I am not sure whether my Anafi still works, it landed on soil but it fell from high altitude. I am devastated with what happened and baffled, as I have no idea what caused this behaviour. Worst thing? The Freeflight app has not recorded the error, as when I tried to locate it, it says "engine errors: 0".

I did some research after the above incidents and saw that drones can have a hard time flying at high elevation. My attempted flight was at 5000m, so I believe it is considered as quite high. Nevertheless, I did not see any warnings on the Freeflight app before or during my flight other than the "engines cut off" error when the Anafi fell. The weather was pretty good and all the equipment (hardware - software) was in excellent condition and ready to fly (also according to FreeFlight 6).

Based on the above, could you please shed some light on the below. Any advice would be very appreciated:

1/ why do you think my Anafi's engine cut off causing the crash?
2/ how can I provide evidence to Parrot of the drone's faulty behaviour given the errors were not recorded on Freeflight? Is there any way to access an incident log and retrieve information on these flights and the errors?
3/ do you think Parrot may not cover any required fixes under the warranty due to the high elevation of the flight? There was no altitude warning in the app and I do not remember reading in any Parrot materials that Anafi is unable to fly at high elevation like this.
4/ If the drone seems okay Freeflight 6 shows it is good to fly, should I keep flying or get it checked for the engine errors and any damages from the crash first? I need aerial content for my project but not sure what to do after yesterday's events.

Thanks for taking the time to read.
Andy

Max service ceiling is 4500 meter asl according to specs. Read at the bottom of the page.


The thin air probably means that the engines can't figure out how to make a hand-start hven the engines come up too high a speed for keeping Anafi flying. If you want to fly at that height, you probably need some special props that are intended for greater heights.

Can you get your Anafi in the air again I recommend starting from the ground and try to hover a battery up to a low height over a soft surface so that nothing happens if Anafis motor is cutting off again.

Good luck, regards Leif.
 
Last edited:
My buddy flies at 11000 feet a lot as he lives in the mountains and said you will notice a big difference in performance at that height so if you are flying even higher that could be your problem.
Hopefully you have not damaged your Anafi and it still works OK.
 
The Parrot Anafi User Guide gives a Service Ceiling of 4500m above sea level. As you were trying to operate at 5000m the motors maybe could not cope.
 
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Why i always see many people post about drone Parrot Anafi cut off?? What happen with Anafi??how prevent this from happening???
 
You guys amaze me.. Drones have no trouble at those altitudes. I think the user is asking since, there is a software limitation of the drone flying over the max height in FF6 if the mountain height is the problem maxing the limitation before he can even launch it. I doubt Parrot would make a drone non flyable to people living and flying in high elevations, it's probably something else.
 
Well, the Anfi certainly does. You are confused about the software limitation of 150 meters. That is the height limit above your take-off elevation, not absolute elevation. The specs say the max altitude is 4500 meters or nearly 15,000 feet. That does not mean that it will fly well up that high.

I'm actually surprised that Andag's Anafi would even get off the ground at 5,000 meters, which is 500 meters above it's service ceiling. Why the motors cut out instead of it just fluttering to the ground from being unable to generate enough lift to remain airborne is unknown but not unreasonable. There is an awful lot going on inside that tiny little brain that we don't know about. It could be that the motors sensed an overspeed condition as they tried to remain airborne in the too thin air. Also, a little knowledge about Density Altitude might come in handy. If the air up there was quite warm, the actual altitude the drone sensed might have been as much as 1,500 meters higher!

A much more powerful drone is required at those elevations; the poor little Anafi was never designed to do that.
 

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