- Joined
- Jul 12, 2019
- Messages
- 12
- Reaction score
- 6
So on flight number 61 I crashed my Anafi. I was just practicing with it and had changed batteries for my last flight of the day with it. Anyways, I was coming in for the landing but way too high. My RTH is set for 150 feet because of the tall pines that surround my house. What I hadn't paid attention to was that my return height was actually closer to 300 because I I had been taking pictures of the sunset over the ridge line above my house. I watched the Anafi come over and start landing. As it decended I noticed I had only 5% battery left at about 80-90 feet. I figured I cut it too close but it would make the landing no issue, especially since I came in on the last battery at 7%. Right then I watched the Anafi completely shut down and fall. Unfortunately I was landing on my gravel driveway so the crash was a rough one.
So here are some take aways from my own stupidity.
1. Don't push batteries that hard. It was especially frustrating because my normal rule is RTH at 20% no matter what. This day I violated it and paid the price.
2. If anything gets wonky immediately RTH. On this flight my flight app actually closed down. The first time that has ever happened. Once I got it back up I fooled around for a couple of minutes doing panorama shots. My gut feeling here is that when the app restarted the battery remaining info was not correct. I believe this is confirmed that when I looked at the flight log on this last flight it showed 0 crashes.
3. Fatigue causes dumb decisions. I had been at an event earlier that day and was wore out. My critical decision making process was not where it should be, see #2.
Finally, the Anafi is one tough bird. I spent the next day taking it apart and making repairs. The arms suffered no damage. Had to only replace two prop blades. The top cover over the GPS unit had damage but was easily fixed. The only issue now is that the camera reads "vertical error" so the bird will not let the motors start even though everything else is green on status. Also, and back to the batteries, the battery that was in the bird was giving 4 red lights flashing when I recovered the bird. This also leads me to believe that the percentage being displayed after the app crash was incorrect and I actually drained the battery completely while still in the air and destroyed the cells in the process.
So what am I going to do now? First, I ordered a new bird along with another battery. That way I will have 3 batteries total. Why? Because, and taking out pilot stupidity such as mine, the Anafi is a great flying bird. Between it and my EVO I actually enjoy flying the Anafi much more. Now the camera on the EVO is better IMO but for flying the Anafi, at least for me, feels more intuitive and natural than the EVO. Besides, I have put a decent amount of money into Anafi accessories and really don't want those to go to waste LOL.
I will down the road contact Parrot and see how the process goes for replacement but after seeing so many threads concerning Parrot CS time I felt replacing on my own for now makes sense. Especially since it was my foolishness that brought about the crash.
Hopefully my experience will help others not make the same mistakes I made.
Peace out.
P.S some of the last photo's I took before the crash and why I really like this bird.
So here are some take aways from my own stupidity.
1. Don't push batteries that hard. It was especially frustrating because my normal rule is RTH at 20% no matter what. This day I violated it and paid the price.
2. If anything gets wonky immediately RTH. On this flight my flight app actually closed down. The first time that has ever happened. Once I got it back up I fooled around for a couple of minutes doing panorama shots. My gut feeling here is that when the app restarted the battery remaining info was not correct. I believe this is confirmed that when I looked at the flight log on this last flight it showed 0 crashes.
3. Fatigue causes dumb decisions. I had been at an event earlier that day and was wore out. My critical decision making process was not where it should be, see #2.
Finally, the Anafi is one tough bird. I spent the next day taking it apart and making repairs. The arms suffered no damage. Had to only replace two prop blades. The top cover over the GPS unit had damage but was easily fixed. The only issue now is that the camera reads "vertical error" so the bird will not let the motors start even though everything else is green on status. Also, and back to the batteries, the battery that was in the bird was giving 4 red lights flashing when I recovered the bird. This also leads me to believe that the percentage being displayed after the app crash was incorrect and I actually drained the battery completely while still in the air and destroyed the cells in the process.
So what am I going to do now? First, I ordered a new bird along with another battery. That way I will have 3 batteries total. Why? Because, and taking out pilot stupidity such as mine, the Anafi is a great flying bird. Between it and my EVO I actually enjoy flying the Anafi much more. Now the camera on the EVO is better IMO but for flying the Anafi, at least for me, feels more intuitive and natural than the EVO. Besides, I have put a decent amount of money into Anafi accessories and really don't want those to go to waste LOL.
I will down the road contact Parrot and see how the process goes for replacement but after seeing so many threads concerning Parrot CS time I felt replacing on my own for now makes sense. Especially since it was my foolishness that brought about the crash.
Hopefully my experience will help others not make the same mistakes I made.
Peace out.
P.S some of the last photo's I took before the crash and why I really like this bird.
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