This is a quick guide to show you how to plan your first arducopter mission.  This will enable you to turn on your arducopter UAV, put it into auto mode, and then arducopter will take-off, then fly to a series of waypoint and land, all on its own!

This guide is just a basic introduction to planning a autonomous Arducopter mission, a future guide will be released showing some more advanced missions with arducopter, such as following a point with a camera, triggering a camera etc...

Hardware in the loop simulation for arducopter has been around for a few months already, but it usually requires you to find a quad-copter model for xplane to use yourself, It is not the prettiest model but it gets the job done.  I have attached a decent model of a quad-copter for xplane, along with the parameters (thanks to Jean-Louis) for anyone to easily get started with arducopter hardware in the loop simulation.  Allowing you to test arducopter out in a safe virtual environment.  The file can be downloaded below (Xplane-quad.zip).

If you are not using the standard Arducopter Power Distribution Board this quide will show you how you can easily connect your ArduPilot Mega/ Arducopter Board with the rest of your frame.    Read more for more details

If you want to add 2 way telemetry to your Arducopter, you can with a Telemetry Kit from Unmanned Tech.  This kit contains everything you need to control your Arducopter with your laptop with the Ground Control Station software.  Read more for all the details