How Tight Can a Flight Plan Be?

[seawolf9844]

My Anafi is arriving tomorrow, Dec 20. I am excited about creating Flight Plans for displaying my home. What should I expect for squeezing my Anafi through certain places. An example could be... flying under a tree whose lower branches are 15 foot high that is 15 feet away from my house. In other words, what are the tolerances for flying through a 15 foot square box.

 

[AugerIn]

Hard no on flying under the tree.

You might get it automated and working 9 times out of 10, but it’s a bit risky, and you lose signal going undwr the tree or close to buildings. What you’re describing should be manual at low alt very close to buildings, trees, people.

At that height you can walk the drone around steadycam style then take off and do the rest of the shot farther away with flightplan, or manual the whole way.

If anything went wrong you’ve only got 7.5 feet in either direction before you have to react and take control. I would try to keep at least 40-50 feet in all directions for flightplan. Remember it can almost instantly accelerate to top speed, so the buffer is how much space you can cover at 80km/h.

 

[seawolf9844]

I appreciate your reply! Thanks.

 

[Rocky the FS]

Flight Plan is not accurate enough for what you suggest. My guess from experience is roughly 5 foot possible error horizontally and vertically under good GPS reception and perhaps 10 feet under more mediocre GPS reception. Read my "Advice for New Pilots" and practice precise manual control at slow speeds before dealing with obstacles. Manually, after considerable practice, you can position the Anafi within 1 foot tolerance. This means that you could fly around your property within a foot of branches, shrubs, buildings, etc. with the Anafi no more than 10 feet from you.....kinda like walking the dog on a very short leash......SLOWLY!

 

[pmh1nic]

I would think that flying under trees and close to a house both obscure the sky and might cause gps signal loss. That said I wouldn't count on an autonomous flight mode to avoid hitting something. In camera mode with slow settings you should be able to fly that by hand with no problems as long as it's not windy and you're walking around the house as you fly keeping the drone within line of sight.

 

[IronSky1]

Not a good idea. Flight Plan is designed to be kept away from obsticals not flying under them . I use FP for years and can get excellent repeatability over time however, I would never try what you are planning .Stay at least 30 ft away minimum GPS is not that accurate. The other concern is the accuracy of the map data. Attached is a test I use over and over for repeatability. It will give you
an idea of how close you can get to what you want I was trying to go done the center of the green border. (it actually stopped twice and did 1 loop that was not in plan)

If I run the same route with Lichi and my Inspire the drif is 1/3 of FP.
Still for the money FP works real well and is repeatable.