Hello all. (UK based)
I am currently putting together a XFly Glastar with an Ardupilot Autopilot which I intend to use for both learning to fly RC and learning more about Ardupilot.
Fail-safe is appearing to be a contentious issue. I thought the autopilot would improve safety in the event of failure in the majority of cases as I had short fail safe to loiter at a point over a field near the flying field to give the operator a chance to resolve control issues, and then land when low battery fail-safe drops throttles to idle or low and the plane circle down in a glide slope until a controlled crash in a known area.
I would have liked to have done a controlled landing, but the plane can’t see if the landing area is clear of planes taking off and other people flying.
Here comes the issue some people seem to think there is a legal requirement to cut throttle to idle/off in the event of a control link failure. I can’t see any reference to it in CAP 722 of article 16 on a quick read through. Some points in CAP 722 say in the event of a control failure the aircraft should land. But here I wonder if it distinguishes between land and crash land?
In addition to that I wonder how I set up the fail safes on the autopilot to circle where it is (and so no worse than a normal RC failure with the added benefit of stabilisation) rather than try to get back to a specific position to circle if it is having issues with GPS?
Thanks for any input.