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Eventful flights using FlightPlan and Return to Home

TJBC75

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Hi all, Had an eventful day yesterday with the Anafi. Here is what happened - feel free to comment and make suggestions. First, was flying about a 5 minute long FlightPlan that I had flown before. Pretty simple with about 15 waypoints and 5 POI's. I fly near Chicago, so it has been pretty cold and snowy here lately. Anyway, my hands got cold while the Flightplan was running (it was about 32 degrees F.) so I put the controller down on my backpack, put on my gloves and then lifted it back up. It was then I noticed that the USB cable from the controller to the tablet became disconnected and I basically had a blank screen. It must have become disconnected when I put down the controller. I did not panic, since I knew (or thought) the Anafi would finish its FlightPlan and return to the original starting point. Well, after waiting an extra 3 minutes past the expected length of the FlightPlan, the Anafi did not show up. I restarted the FreeFlight app ( the controller showed blue throughout this time, indicating connection) and saw that the Anafi was just hovering at one of the FlightPlan waypoints -- it just stopped and hovered mid FlightPlan - Fortunately I had a lot of battery left and just flew it back to my position. I know this seems like a unique situation with the disconnection of the USB cable, but shouldn't the Anafi have completed the FlightPlan even though my tablet became disconnected from the controller during the flight? Or, did the disconnection of the USB cable somehow pause or cancel the FlightPlan?

Second, later in the day, I was out flying in an open field. Since there was snow on the ground, I took off from a asphalt sidewalk about 5 feet wide. I had not used the RTH function lately, so I decided to make sure all was working with that function. Pressed return to home, (I was about 1,000 feet away) and the Anafi came back to home position at my predesignated RTH altitude. Started to descend and I noticed that it would come down about 3 feet from its original starting point, off the sidewalk but above a snow covered area. As you will all remember, on RTH, the Anafi descends to about 4 or 5 feet off the ground and just waits there. for you to land it. Well, on this RTH, the Anafi did not stop at 4 or 5 feet above the ground, but kept right on descending and plowed into the snow pretty hard. No gradual landing, just kept right on going until the motors stopped because of the snow. No damage, but a little disconcerting. I am wondering if the white snow messed up the bottom sensor - anyone else ever experience this? (BTW, I tested out the RTH on another flight in a parking lot with no snow and the RTH worked just fine)
 
Anything white or shiny will effect the bottom sensors so the snow played a roll in your landing. As for the USB cable causing flight plan to stop I don't think that was your problem. Perhaps with the cold hands you touch something on the controller to make it pause. Any stick movement will pause it from my experience.
You could try a short test and unplug the cable to see if that indeed caused it.
 
Now that I think about it, I could have easily touched one of the sticks when I put the controller down on the backpack. Thanks for pointing that out. Will do a test this week to try and duplicate the situation and see what happen. Yes, I agree that the snow was the issue with the RTH - will have to keep a close watch on RTH's during the winter months if there is snow on the gorund.
 
One of my Autel X-Star UAV did not like landing on a icy road. It decided it was going to skip around on the road till it found a dark spot to land. Kind of a tense few moments watching skid around :)
 
Hi all, Had an eventful day yesterday with the Anafi. Here is what happened - feel free to comment and make suggestions. First, was flying about a 5 minute long FlightPlan that I had flown before. Pretty simple with about 15 waypoints and 5 POI's. I fly near Chicago, so it has been pretty cold and snowy here lately. Anyway, my hands got cold while the Flightplan was running (it was about 32 degrees F.) so I put the controller down on my backpack, put on my gloves and then lifted it back up. It was then I noticed that the USB cable from the controller to the tablet became disconnected and I basically had a blank screen. It must have become disconnected when I put down the controller. I did not panic, since I knew (or thought) the Anafi would finish its FlightPlan and return to the original starting point. Well, after waiting an extra 3 minutes past the expected length of the FlightPlan, the Anafi did not show up. I restarted the FreeFlight app ( the controller showed blue throughout this time, indicating connection) and saw that the Anafi was just hovering at one of the FlightPlan waypoints -- it just stopped and hovered mid FlightPlan - Fortunately I had a lot of battery left and just flew it back to my position. I know this seems like a unique situation with the disconnection of the USB cable, but shouldn't the Anafi have completed the FlightPlan even though my tablet became disconnected from the controller during the flight? Or, did the disconnection of the USB cable somehow pause or cancel the FlightPlan?

Second, later in the day, I was out flying in an open field. Since there was snow on the ground, I took off from a asphalt sidewalk about 5 feet wide. I had not used the RTH function lately, so I decided to make sure all was working with that function. Pressed return to home, (I was about 1,000 feet away) and the Anafi came back to home position at my predesignated RTH altitude. Started to descend and I noticed that it would come down about 3 feet from its original starting point, off the sidewalk but above a snow covered area. As you will all remember, on RTH, the Anafi descends to about 4 or 5 feet off the ground and just waits there. for you to land it. Well, on this RTH, the Anafi did not stop at 4 or 5 feet above the ground, but kept right on descending and plowed into the snow pretty hard. No gradual landing, just kept right on going until the motors stopped because of the snow. No damage, but a little disconcerting. I am wondering if the white snow messed up the bottom sensor - anyone else ever experience this? (BTW, I tested out the RTH on another flight in a parking lot with no snow and the RTH worked just fine)


About the landing, I have a similar experience but on grass under strong sunlight. Anafi came down descending until it hit the ground and climbed again, wandered a bit and stopped again, so I commanded it to land. I think that the optical flow was blinded by the strong sunlight, the ultrasonic sensor failled to get a propper reading over the grass and the barometer isn't enough realiable to detect the height...
 

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