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Hello everyone,

Please advise:

Today I was flying my HK Bixler with APM 2.5, doing some testing in preparation for a simulated Search and Rescue challenge next weekend with my local drone group. This is about my 12th fully autonomous mission I have successfully run on this platform. On my second preplanned mission of the day, during a straightline path between waypoints, I noticed my craft was noticeably offset from its planned course. It was holding a steady heading, roughly in the correct direction, and at the correct altitude. However, it was flying its course over 200 feet East of where it should have been. This was evident in the telemetry feed on my laptop, and in visually seeing the plane too far away. I assumed it was simply fighting a breeze, and that it would correct and eventually reach the waypoint. However, it continued in a straight line, and when it reached the correct latitude for its target coordinates, Mission Planner audibly alerted me that it was heading to the next waypoint. It acted as though it had reached its target, when in reality, it was more than 200 feet away from it. The position it was reporting was correct on Mission Planner, and the same mission had already been run successfully once this morning. However, it falsely believed it had reached the target coordinates, when it had not. My waypoint radius is set at 40 ft, and it was well over 200 feet away from the waypoint it claimed to have reached! Why was it doing this? Has anyone else had this issue?

So immediately after this occurred, I decided to bring it back and land because I was concerned that something was awry. I flicked it into RTL, and suddenly the plane began to spiral and lose altitude quickly. I tried to enter manual mode and save it, but it was too far away for me to see. It crashed in a field nearly 300 yds from my position. I was able to recover it, but with extensive damage. Its tail surfaces were in pieces, my gopro mount snapped in half, the wing is damaged, the prop was bent beyond salvageable, and the canopy/carriage holding my electronics was obliterated. All electronics seem to be functional, thankfully.

Can anyone help me? This is my first unexplained failure of the system.

All advice appreciated,

Jake