took the anafi up about 200 feet in 20mph today

[ufosaboveus]

So I was wanting to get a good feel for what kinds of winds the little Anafi could handle and decided to cautiously go up from the back yard today. Winds were 20 gusting to 25. The high winds warning was showing on my phone but the little Anafi handled it great. I tried some photos and video and although the horizon was leaning a bit due to the wind... pics were still surprisingly clear.

 

[Krusty Geeza]

@ufosaboveus Have you seen UAVForecast? It's a service available at their site for free, or through their apps, in Android or iOS flavours on your mobile device. Even though the apps offer in-app purchases, you don't need it for what I think is the best feature on it for drone users. It has the ability to show you what the wind speeds are at different altitudes, which is usually quite different from the regular wind speeds shown on weather services.

For example:
At ground (10 metres) it's currently 4 km/h with 25 km/h gusts, but,
at 100 metres (300 odd foot) it's 7 km/h & 48 km/h gusts!

I have seen some videos of the Anafi in 45 km/h winds, but I don't know that I'd want to put mine that high in it. If something were to go wrong with it up that high, it's a long way down!

 

[zandoli]

I'm not that brave as yet. Have not gone above 80ft.
Where I'm from the winds are usually between 10 and 20mph with higher gusts.

 

[ufosaboveus]

Love it zandoli! Beatiful scenery you have there. Krusty, I have an app that tells winds aloft that I use for my airplane flying but it doesn't give it in short distances so finding out the gusts at 100m would be handy. Will have to download that one.

 

[Drabbs]

finding out the gusts at 100m would be handy

Remember though, that without any weather monitoring equipment directly above you (at 100m) the wind speed and gusts are only extrapolations from the actual nearest weather station, they are not going to be very accurate.

 

[Krusty Geeza]

Remember though, that without any weather monitoring equipment directly above you (at 100m) the wind speed and gusts are only extrapolations from the actual nearest weather station, they are not going to be very accurate.

It is based upon the Wind Gradient theory, which is generally accepted by scientists to be pretty accurate!

Short of getting a wind station attached to another drone & taking it up, we aren't ever going to get an absolutely accurate result, but this is a very strong predictor, with just the same sort of guessing as is used & fully accepted for global warming & many other things.