since I fly both ArduCopter and ArduPlane I noticed a slight difference in actions to failsafe and recovering out of failsafe.
Arducopter activates RTL when it sees the low throttle failsafe value and jumps back to whatever flightmode was active before when recovering from failsafe - since the flight mode channel also changes values based on RX failsafe.
ArduPlane activates CIRCLE/RTL when it sees the low throttle failsafe value but unlike Arducopter it stays in RTL untill you purposely toggle the flightmode switch. Even it sees at the time of recovery the same flightmode channel value change as the ArduCopter it ignores at that time the flightmode change.
With my latest TX/RX systems all channels would teach a failsafe value. So I always setup flight mode RTL at 1500uS and also teach the flightmode channel the 1500uS failsafe value together with the throttle channel to the lowest value to activate throttle failsafe.
I am wondering if with ArduCopter it is wanted to go back immediately to any previous flightmode? Or wouldn’t it be better to stay in RTL and have the pilot control the recovery by toggling the flightmode channel? Or am I doing something wrong with my setup?
Arducopter does not change from failsafe mode, unless you change the flight mode. You must have failsafe set in rx that changes the mode. What rc system are you using?
Exactly, the flight mode channel changes its value with the RX failsafe since all channels are taught a failsafe value. Before I had a FrSky RX and now I am using a ezUHF - both RX teach all channels a failsafe value. So I can not prevent the flight mode channel to change its value to the taught failsafe value. FrSky was even worse as they output a 1500uS value for 3-4sec during startup independent of what failsafe value you had taught in the RX.
But Tridge did it somehow different with the Arduplane. There it ignores any flightmode change when going to failsafe and coming out of it. The Arducopter does that not - it switches right back to whatever mode the flightmode channel jumps to when it recovers it signal.
Can you imagine an intermittent signal loss? Or lets say I fly in a non stabilized mode and it goes to failsafe. While I am checking my gear it gets back into signal range and switches back for example to ACRO because that was the mode I was flying in before?
I think it would be beneficial to ignore mode changes for a second when the copter sees that throttle failsafe recovers. So the copter stays in RTL till I toggle the switch and not my RX by changing mode value because it comes out of RX failsafe.
UPDATE:
I have to revise my statement that ArduPlane does it different. For some reason on the bench test it stayed in RTL turning the TX off and on but on the field flying really out of range it also jumped back to the previous flight mode.