A great manual has been prepared by Andrew.
Most recent update to the manual:
– the link to the page where the FW can be build https://custom.ardupilot.org/
– after selection of Plane Vehicle, Latest Version and your Board, the minimum set of components required in FC is: Enable EKF2, EKF3, Wind estimation for EKF3, BMP280 Barometric Sensor, In-Flight compass learning, Fixed-Yaw Compass Calibration, HMC5843 compasses, @MISSION/ filesystem, @PARAM/ filesystem, @ROMFS/ filesystem, @SYS/ filesystem, NMEA GPS, NMEA Unicore GPS, U-blox GPS, Batch sampler, InertialSensor harmonic notch filters, MAVLink FTP protocol, MISSION_REQUEST MAVLink messages, DeviceOp MAVLink messages, Serial Control MAVLink messages, Old REQUEST_AUTOPILOT_CAPABILITIES command, Bootloader flashing, Buttons, “Tumble” compass calibration, Custom sensor rotations, Logging, Formatting of microSD cards, Blackbox logging
– please not that Blackbox feature is enable and default settings are 5m/s. It means that while on the ground, the system will be disarmed (enabling configuration and calibration, no logging). The system will be armed when the model moves faster then 5m/s, enabling logging to the SD card.
– updating FW in Ardupilot, normally preserves the parameters hence no new calibration is required. It is a good practice to check the basic level calibration now and then.
– updated version may exhibit larger log file size due to the default logging configuration for some groups of messages. This can be controlled reviewing logging rates for SR0_xxx parameters.