Discussions

I just received my APM 2.5 and have yet to make an actual flight but have been familiarizing myself with it through the Flightgear simulator before throwing it into my Bixler.

I've been programming a simple mission with auto take-off, several waypoints, and ending with autoland. For some reason, after my last waypoint before it reaches the autoland point, APM  is apparently commanding the plane to climb from the last waypoint of 40 meters all the way to 250 to 300 meters. Once it hits the autoland command point it starts a very long glide back down to the land which ends up being a very long distance away from where I want it to land. Any ideas? Is there a parameter that is set to do this?

Another issue with autoland is that APM locks in a trajectory that I do not intend. Although I plot a mission that allows a very generous straight approach to the autoland command point, in the sim it often makes a last moment crosstrack correction before hitting the autoland command point which frequently results in a water landing or into a barreling through a building (default runway is at SFO). If this were to happen in an actual flight, it could potentially mean a lost or damaged plane.
Is there a way to specify a landing heading that I am not seeing or is this just left to APM to decide?

Thanks,
Andy