After talking a few friends/family through the above questions, I decided to just write this up to give to people. Its not meant to go over every single difference between the different models, but rather be a guide for where they should start...
What happened had nothing to do with the gimbal position.
The clouds you tried to descend through were dense enough for the downward facing sensors to perceive them as solid ground.
When you have the left stick pulled down and your drone...