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Operate

Day-to-day operation of tl-starnav: bring up the link, monitor it, fly, and read the dashboard. Complete Install and the Mandatory Update first.

Outline — IOC operator-guide skeleton

This is the day-0 structure for the operate guide (a hard IOC deliverable), seeded with the real operational surface and finalized per platform.

Pre-flight checklist

  • GCS app running and signed in; aircraft shows online and bound.
  • Bridge link up and healthy (transport state, RTT, loss within range).
  • Navigation reports a position and the quality gate is satisfied.
  • Autopilot sees the bridged MAVLink connection.
  • You are on the current release on both ends (post mandatory update).
  1. Power the aircraft; confirm Starlink connectivity.
  2. The GCS app and aircraft establish the private network connection automatically.
  3. The Layer-2 bridge comes up: your GCS LAN and the aircraft LAN behave as one segment. Mission Planner and payload streams connect through it as if the aircraft were local.

Read the dashboard

The GCS dashboard surfaces what you need in flight:

  • Bridge / transport status — link state, round-trip time, loss, reconnects, and link health over time.
  • Navigation status — position, EKF/quality state, and whether Starlink-derived position is being sent to the autopilot.
  • Map / HUD — aircraft position on a satellite map and a 3D situational view.
  • Logs — recent activity from both the GCS and the aircraft.

Fly

  • Operate the aircraft through your normal GCS/Mission Planner workflow over the bridged link.
  • Keep an eye on link health and navigation quality on the dashboard.
  • If the link degrades, the transport recovers automatically; the dashboard shows reconnects and outages.

After flight

  • Review the flight logs in the GCS app.
  • Confirm no pending updates before the next sortie.