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
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