Question about home location

My understanding is that the home location in Arduplane is determined by the location established at first GPS lock. In Arducopter it is different, the point where the craft is armed. The Arduplane home location selection creates a possibility of uncertainty - particularly in the case where a full GCS is not being used and the position to which the craft will RTH may not be what the user expects.

There is, no doubt, a sound reason for the different home selection decision and I was wondering could someone please advise the reason why?

Home is where the vehicle is armed http://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/rtl-mode.html

Actually, Plane does drift home if disarmed (etc):

Has it always been like that?. I was trying to understand how an aircraft could fly 3 laps of a mission which was supposed to finish with RTH but instead of returning to the point where it was armed/acquired GPS lock flew off in a straight line in the general direction of my house until the battery ran out a couple of km away.

What sort of logs do you have to diagnose the problem?

If you have onboard logs (ne dataflash logs), you might inspect the ORGN
message. If you have telemetry logs, you might check home_position
message.

What was your arming-check bitmask? Did you force-arm the Plane?

We do scribble home down in Plane and use it before we start to drift.
If you armed without a GPS lock then it could very well do what you
describe if you’d previously had a GPS lock at your home. It obviously
would have to have lock to undertake the mission your describe - but that
could be you flying it in a manually-piloted mode before switching to
auto.

Also… was it out of RC range before you tried to take control?!

The aircraft was located by following its track on a tablet. The logs could not be downloaded, the reason given was that the file was corrupt.

The plane was flown in stabilise mode prior to switching to auto. The most logical explanation then I guess could be that it was armed before GPS lock was obtained so used the location taken from the last time it was used which would have been at a flying site near to my home.

The aircraft disappeared from visual range immediately after completing the mission and flew out of RF range while the pilot and two observers were searching the sky for it.

The aircraft was located by following its track on a tablet. The logs could not be downloaded, the reason given was that the file was corrupt.

Does the tablet application keep telemetry log files?

The plane was flown in stabilise mode prior to switching to auto. The most logical explanation then I guess could be that it was armed before GPS lock was
obtained so used the location taken from the last time it was used which would have been at a flying site near to my home.

We have arming checks to make sure that doesn’t happen. Were they
disabled - because if not we have a significant problem.

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