The best practice i have developed is to have geo-fence on the separate switch on my Taranis. This way if I have a need just to start drone quickly in alt-hold, shoot some scenery and quickly lower it down - it is doable with no wait time to lock into GPS. In the usual scenario you flip switch for geo-fence up and vehicle is not going to arm until it properly locks into 3D GPS - that in combination with RTL function properly configured more or less guarantees that you will not have any issues and it will return where it started from.
Iam currently testing Boat Mode with Coptor 3.5.0 - RC 8 with green cube on Solo using Solex. I note that when setting INS_GYR_CAL to 0 via Tower and rebooting, the LED sequence stops at the Blue disco lights and does not complete the initialization to Red/Green White/Yellow. Solex will not control the LED’s and is not in control. Using Tower, that will arm Solo and the solo controller will allow flight in manually or stabilize.
Has anyone really managed to make boat mode work with Solo,green cube and 3.5.0 - RC 8? If so how?
I have a boat ready for testing and want to see how EKF2 will deal with movement on open seas. I have perfected hand catching without any finger loss.
The LEDs staying in blue strobe under those circumstances is something I need to fix. The LEDs are waiting for the gyro calibration to begin and then complete. With the gyro Cal disabled, it never happens and they never switch out of blue strobe. Despite that, the solo is operating normally. It’s just the LEDs that won’t do their thing.
Thanks, look forward to the fix. The problem is compounded by the Solex not being able to communicate in this
mode so cannot turn the blue lights off which disrupts the video due to the flashing.
I also note that continuous movement is still causing a similar disruption.
What do you mean solex is not in control? It won’t be able to stop the LEDs because mavlink override comes long after the initialization stage. But you should still have all other flight controls and interfaces.
In the meantime, I suggest some black tape over the front lights 
HI all … I have tested rc8 with various flight missions, manual and auto it seems fine … although now I have to switch the retract switch twice before they retract up PITA… how can I set this back to flip switch and retract directly?
I will be testing with Navio soon just waiting for motors to arrive for new “safe frame” we designed for the Polytechnic.
I’ve just moved up to 3.5.RC8 as advised due to fitting a Pix 2.1 to my big copter and it flies like a turkey.It’s actually scary.It flew nicely on a Pixhack with 3.4.6.So I posted a seperate thread in the Pixhawk 2 thread with logs and wondered if anyone could have a quick browse and see why it’s now so bad.Thanks.
http://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/pixhawk-2-1-big-hexacopter-wobbles/18819
Flew a few batteries today on rc8 - did not get any home position updated messages.