Plan a Flight

Plan a flight as you normally would.

Enable “Vehicle Follows Terrain”

Once the flight is planned select the survey mission item(s) that should have terrain following enabled.

The expanded view of the survey mission item will appear.

Select the terrain drop down.

Check the “Vehicle follows terrain” box.

Terrain following is now enabled with the default settings.

Repeat for each survey mission item that requires terrain following to be enabled.

Adjust Settings

Adjust the settings as required.

Tolerance

The tolerance value is used to set the threshold that determines if there is a large enough change in reported elevation between adjacent terrain tiles to command a change in flight altitude.

A 15-foot tolerance is recommended for use with PHX.

Max Climb Rate

The default setting is recommended.

Max Descent Rate

The default setting is recommended.

Upload Flight Plan

Once the flight is planned upload it to the aircraft.

Because terrain enabled flight plans have more waypoints in them , the upload process may be slower than normal.

Download Flight Plan

Once the flight plan is uploaded to the aircraft, use the File menu > Vehicle > Download to download the waypoints from the aircraft.

The flight plan will now look like a large list of waypoints.

This allows the waypoints and the terrain elevation to be visualized in the Terrain Altitude bar at the bottom of the plan screen.

Verify Waypoints

Use the Terrain Altitude bar at the bottom of the screen to verify that none of the waypoints intersect with the terrain information.

Not all waypoints can be seen at once in the terrain bar. Scroll across the bar from right to left to view all the waypoints.

If there are any red waypoints or missing black bars there is likely a terrain interaction or missing terrain information.

Adjust the waypoint and/or retrieve any missing terrain information.