On some recent test flights, I was using a “Do land start”, then Loiter to altitude, exit tangent, command to line up for final approach on Arduplane (non VTOL).
RTL was set to land immediately using do land start and intercepting the auto mission landing approach.
I wanted to put this out there to see if it is a potential oversight or bug.
It appeared that when the aircraft entered an RTL mode, either commanded by pilot or from a failsafe, when intercepting the loiter to altitude path after the do land start, the aircraft defaulted to a clockwise loiter on the final approach. It did not respect the direction of loiter when the loiter was anti-clockwise.
I didn’t test an explicit “Land” mode command, since the loiter direction happened to be clockwise when I did this. So I am not sure if it would have respected the direction in anti-clockwise direction when commanding land expiciltly.
We solved this by allowing the aircraft to return closer to home, then setting a different waypoint in auto, then explicitally setting the loiter to altitude waypoint again. This resulted in the aircraft chosing the correct direction of loiter.
Obviously, this is important for ensuring a safe approach path, so I wanted to enquire on the forum.